New Grand Challenges grant opportunities

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along with its partners in the Grand Challenges initiative, is currently accepting applications for various upcoming grant programs. The foundation is looking forward to receiving innovative ideas from around the world and from all disciplines. 

Grand Challenges Explorations, an initiative to encourage innovative and unconventional global health and development solutions, is accepting grant proposals from applicants at any experience level, in any discipline and from any organisation, on the following topics:

• Addressing Newborn and Infant Gut Health Through Bacteriophage-Mediated Microbiome Engineering
• Explore New Ways to Measure Delivery and Use of Digital Financial Services Data
• Surveillance Tools, Diagnostics and an Artificial Diet to Support New Approaches to Vector Control
• New Approaches for Addressing Outdoor/Residual Malaria Transmission
• Reducing Pneumonia Fatalities Through Innovations that Improve Pneumonia Diagnosis & Referral of Malnourished Children
• Enable Merchant Acceptance of Mobile Money Payments

Initial grants will be US$100,000 each, and projects showing promise will have the opportunity to receive additional funding of up to US$1 million. Proposals are being accepted until 13 May.

A Grand Challenge for Development has launched Saving Lives at Birth for the innovative prevention and treatment approaches for pregnant women and newborns in poor, hard-to-reach communities around the world. Program partners will fund transformative approaches that cut across three main domains: science and technology; service delivery; and demand-side innovation. The application deadline is 27 March.

A Grand Challenge for Development has also launched two grant opportunities as part of All Children Reading:

• As part of the Technology to Support Education in Crisis and Conflict Settings Ideation Challenge, the program is seeking technology-supported approaches to provide basic education in one or more of the following situations: health crisis; natural disaster; and conflict zone. Proposed solutions should be usable within the first six months after the onset of the crisis or conflict and be usable within the context of a developing country. The application deadline is 30 March.
• The Tracking & Tracing Books Prize Competition is seeking innovations to track books destined for early-grade classrooms and learning centres in low-income countries and allow stakeholders, ranging from parents to ministries of education and donor agencies, to quickly and easily access tracking information. The application deadline is 1 April.

The Global Health Innovative Technology Fund (GHIT), as part of its Grand Challenges Japan initiative, has launched a Target Research Platform to fund bold ideas in drugs, vaccines and diagnostics for a set of neglected infectious diseases. Applications must be from a partnership between Japanese and non-Japanese organisations and submitted by 13 March.

For more information on the grants, visit http://grandchallenges.org/grant-opportunities.html.