A note from Team Hydro Co-founder Peter Finlayson
My beautiful sister Kate died when she was just 26. She taught me a lot about how to live life. A few years before she passed, she was preparing for YET ANOTHER brain surgery to treat her hydrocephalus, which meant among other things, lost hair.With my brother Samuel and a few friends (Andrew Rogers, Josh Baylor) we surprised her by driving home from college and letting her shave our heads to show our love and support.
Today there are 1 million Americans afflicted by hydrocephalus,
Team Hydro is the organization that we founded to raise funds and awareness for hydrocephalus research. We are 100% volunteer run and every penny we receive goes directly to research. You can read more about our research grants here. It is truly remarkable stuff.
Team Hydro’s philosophy in funding research grants is simple:
- We support research with the potential to move science towards a cure for Hydrocephalus, rather than just small variations on the clinical status quo. This includes projects that seek to uncover the basic biology underlying this disease, to determine and halt causative factors, and to generate innovative new approaches to therapy.
- We support promising researchers with potential for long-term impact on the field. The lifeblood of academic research in the U.S. is, generally speaking, large federal grants issued via the NIH, the DoD, and other public research agencies. We have no intention to replace these agencies! However, it is currently impossible for new researchers (especially those interested in under-funded conditions like Hydrocephalus) to qualify for lab-sustaining grants from these departments without preliminary data. By the same token, commercial R&D typically enters the foray only after preliminary data developed via private and public investment. At Team Hydro, we seek to provide hydrocephalus researchers with seed funding that will enable them to assemble the critical mass of data necessary to bridge the gap towards the major public grants (and/or commercial development). In doing so, we hope to help their labs to become self-sustaining entities for research, discovery, and the training of new talent that will continue in the field for many years to come.
To this end Team Hydro has raised over $800,000 to date and supported a range of research grants in the U.S., Australia, and Canada. Importantly, all our grantees are selected as a part of rigorous peer review process in conjunction with expert panels through partnership with the Hydrocephalus Association. Finally, as we proudly state elsewhere, all Team Hydro fundraising dollars are applied directly towards grant funding — not overhead costs.
I invite you to be a part of Team Hydro. Please take part in this challenge. It is the perfect way to make the world a better place from the safety of your home during this uncertain time.
- Chip in. (Donate here: https://donate.teamhydro.org/haircut)
- Cut your hair. (And post a photo or video to Social Media)
- Challenge your Friends to do the same!