A $75,000 USD Grant Is Available for Young Researchers Working to Eradicate Safety Testing on Animals

VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - June 15, 2016) - This year, the Lush Prize is offering $75,000 USD to Young Scientists in North and South America who have been working towards the goal of replacing animals in chemical safety testing.

The Regional Young Researcher Award is open to keen young scientists (up to 35 years at the time of application) with a desire to fund the next stage of a career focused on finding alternatives to animal testing.

"Besides financial support, the Lush Prize has been helpful for giving our research program more widespread recognition," said Jeremy Caplin, winner of the 2015 Young Researcher Prize. "The prize has resulted in an invited presentation at the World Preclinical Congress 3D Cellular Models conference, which will be held in Boston in mid-June. We are proud of this accomplishment and believe it will help bring more interest into our research project."

Because toxicology has for so long been centered on animal testing, many scientists with concerns about the use of animals are deterred from becoming toxicologists. Those who do enter the field can find that access to funding for working on non-animal tests can be a barrier.

The Regional Young Researcher Prize is designed to give scientists the funds needed to continue innovating in the field of toxicology without the need for animals.

Nominations
Nominations for the Regional Young Researchers Award are open until midnight on July 24, 2016. Scientists from North or South America could win one of five bursaries of $15,000 USD each (for a total of $75,000 USD).

Nominations can either be made by the individual themselves or by their academic colleagues using the main website forms at: www.lushprize.org/nominate-enter/young-researcher-award/.

About the Lush Prize
Established in 2012, the Lush Prize is a partnership between Lush Cosmetics and Ethical Consumer to support animal-free toxicology and is designed to reward groups or individuals working in the field of cruelty-free scientific research, awareness-raising and lobbying to help bring an end to animal testing. The $360,000 USD annual prize fund is the biggest prize in the non-animal testing sector, and the only one to focus solely on the replacement of animal tests. It seeks to focus pressure on safety testing for consumer products in a way that complements projects already addressing the animal testing of medicines.