"I’d like to offer my support and congratulations to the University of Birmingham and the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign on the launch of this innovative Birmingham-Illinois BRIDGE fellows scheme. This fellowship scheme is just the latest development in this exemplary US-UK higher education partnership which is already showing impressive results. I have no doubt that the opportunities this scheme provides for outstanding early career researchers to join research groups at two leading global universities will result in the generation of further impactful research."