The generous gift supports collaborative, multi-disciplinary research underway in the University of Sydney's Digital Sciences Initiative. The founders of global tech company Appen, Julia and Chris Vonwiller, will fund a $1 million acceleration of the University's Digital Sciences Initiative (DSI). The gift will support renowned researcher Professor Gemma Figtree's collaboration with the DSI in her quest to achieve the'holy grail' of cardiac disease research – the discovery of blood-based biomarkers that indicate the earliest signs of heart disease. Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, killing an estimated 7.2 million people each year. In Australia, it is also the leading cause of disease burden as well as death, affecting more than 580,000 people in 2017-18.