Applications open for 2025 Amber Young Burns Research Fellowship
A generous grant scheme for early career researchers to kickstart projects in paediatric burns is open for applications.
We are delighted that applications for the 2025 Amber Young Burns Research Fellowship – a £20,000 grant scheme for an early career researcher to kickstart a project in paediatric burns – is now open.
The Fellowship is for pump-priming, feasibility studies, and proof of principle projects intended to support early career burns researchers. There’s no disciplinary requirement: we encourage innovation from all fields, so long as the project improves the quality of care of paediatric burns patients.
Funding has only been made possible thanks to the generosity of Professor Amber Young, an inspirational and much-missed researcher and clinician.
Amber was an incredible burns researcher and friend of the Scar Free Foundation. Her tireless dedication to improving paediatric burn care defined her career, until her untimely death in 2022.
Not long before Amber died, she was awarded a major NIHR grant to undertake a James Lind Priority Setting Partnership to identify the priorities for global burns research.
Top ten research priorities in global burns care was published on April 23 2025 in The Lancet Global Health.
This project is essentially the culmination of her life’s work and was continued by her colleagues after Amber passed away.
We are encouraging applicants to address these 10 questions in their applications, closing the loop by using Amber’s legacy to answer the research questions she helped define.
- “Even though she had published papers, led ground-breaking projects, and changed the landscape of paediatric burns, she knew there was still more to do. She wanted to continue her work – even if she wasn’t able to see it through”.
- Norman Heckington, Amber’s husband
Amber was the Clinical Lead of the Scar Free Foundation Centre for Children’s Burns Research, and her dedication transformed paediatric burn care through internationally-recognised research.
With Scar Free funding, Amber helped to develop the infection detecting dressing, brought together the global burns community to create a burns core outcome set, and conducted a feasibility study for the establishment of a much needed children’s burns cohort and gene bank – among many other projects.
Though her work with the Foundation accounted for only a small part of Amber’s extensive and impressive research portfolio, her impact on our organisation, and the field of burns research, cannot be overstated.
- “Amber was a dedicated, curious, and passionate children’s burns researcher. She loved what she did. Towards the end, that’s what kept her going”.
- Norman Heckingston
The Amber Young Burns Research Fellowship is Amber’s generous gift to the next generation of burns researchers, patients, and treatments.
When she offered this legacy to the Scar Free Foundation, Amber wanted three things:
- The money to be used for small pump-priming grants, which could get the ball rolling on innovative projects and foster the next generation of paediatric burns researchers.
- Anyone to be able to apply, from any discipline.
- The funded projects to improve the quality of care for paediatric burns patients. It didn’t matter what field, so long as it made people’s lives better.
We are honoured to have known and worked with Amber – and that we’ve been trusted to continue her remarkable legacy through this Fellowship.
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