Gates Foundation awards grants to test ideas ranging from using Big Data for Social Good to Inventing next gen condoms

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a new round of winners as part of its Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) initiative. GCE grants fund innovative ideas to tackle persistent global health and development problems. Winning proposals this round will tackle a wide range of issues including: using social data for social good, the next generation of condom, helping women farmers in the developing world, new interventions for neglected diseases, and bringing together human and animal health for new solutions.

Winners spanning 14 countries were selected from more than 2,700 proposals. Winners represent a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines, including design professionals, health researchers, polymer engineers, entrepreneurs, and public-private coalitions.

"Grand Challenges Explorations is designed to foster the most innovative ideas to save the lives of the world's poorest people," said Chris Wilson, director of the Discovery & Translational Sciences team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "Although these five areas are very different, solving each one of these problems in new ways could make a huge impact." 

Each of the 81 projects announced today received $100,000 in funding to address one of the following topics: 

Increasing Interoperability of Social Good Data - The world is awash in data and computing power, and while most industries are racing to take advantage of this resource and capability, many in the social sector are not yet able to do so easily. Projects are working to improve the availability and use of impact data by bringing together information from multiple organizations operating in similar fields and geographical areas to better track performance and manage programs. Projects include: 

-- Pushpa Singh of the Civil Society Information Services India in Mumbai will build a validated, searchable, and up-to-date NGO information source to store information from multiple sources on not-for-profit organizations to make it easier to access support from philanthropic intermediaries. Philanthropic intermediaries currently perform independent searches to find appropriate NGO partners to support, which costs time, money, and effort.

Develop the Next Generation of Condom - Quite simply, condoms save lives but new thinking is needed to ensure that men and women around the world are using them consistently and correctly to prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. These projects are working to improve uptake and regular use of male and female condoms by developing new condoms that significantly preserve or enhance pleasure and by developing better packaging or designs that are easier to properly use. Projects include:

-- Lakshminarayanan Ragupathy of HLL Lifecare Ltd. in Trivandrum will work to improve the safety and enhance the sensitivity of male condoms by incorporating graphene into condom-making materials. They will mix graphene with currently used condom materials to produce thinner, heat conducting condoms, and incorporate drugs and compounds to further enhance safety as well as sexual experience.

Labor Saving Innovations for Women Smallholder Farmers - Three quarters of the world's poorest people get their food and income from farming small plots of land - typically the size of a football field or smaller; most of them labor under difficult conditions, and most of them are women. These projects will explore holistic solutions to boost labor productivity of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa with a specific emphasis on increasing the productivity of women farmers' labor to revolutionize current approaches to crop protection, management, and harvesting. Projects include:

-- Vaibhav Tidke of the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai will design and test a low-cost movable dryer called CassavaTech to easily and quickly dry large quantities of cassava, a major staple crop grown by women smallholder farmers. The majority of harvested cassava is dried to make flour and chips, but traditional hand drying methods take between five and fifteen days.

New Approaches for Detection, Treatment, and Control of Selected Neglected Tropical Diseases - Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are a large and diverse group of diseases that disproportionately affect the poor in the developing world and typically lack attention and funding for research and development. These projects are working to generate novel approaches to the treatment and control of NTDs by improving the detection of parasites; developing drug treatments that are safe, effective, and affordable; and interrupting transmission, with the ultimate goal of ridding the world of these infectious diseases. Projects include:

-- Judy Sakanari of the University of California, San Francisco, and Manu Prakash from Stanford University in the United States will develop an inexpensive electromagnetic detection device to identify and diagnose parasitic worms to help infected patients get well faster. Using animal infection models, they will develop an easy-to-use electronic bandage enabling ultrasensitive detection of tissue changes caused by worm movement or physical changes in the adult worms over time following drug treatment. The bandages will ultimately be tested in humans and could be designed to transfer data remotely for real-time monitoring of the effects of drug treatments in the field.

The 'One Health' Concept: Bringing Together Human and Animal Health for New Solutions - Over the last century, both human and veterinary medicine have made great advancements. In spite of the many overlaps between the two disciplines, they have become distinctly separate, limiting cross-disciplinary sharing of knowledge. These projects are exploring innovative ideas within the concept of 'One Health' to address human and livestock diseases, human nutrition, health service delivery, and measurement of impact. Projects include: 

-- Vandana Patravale of the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai will develop a nanovaccine using green technology against brucellosis, a disease endemic in sub-Saharan West Africa. The vaccine will be developed for non-invasive nasal administration.

GCE Phase II Grants - Also announced today were 13 Phase II GCE grants from countries including China, Ghana, India, and Portugal. Grantees will receive follow-on funding based on promising results from their Phase I GCE work. Projects include:

-- Abi Santhosh Aprem of HLL Lifecare Ltd. in Trivandrum will continue work coating IUD devices with polymers to increase acceptance of this highly effective contraceptive device.