Learning How to Incite Healthy Behavior, How to Measure Brain Development

The range of Grand Explorations Explorations (GCE) projects we are announcing today - from inciting healthy behavior to developing new technology - captures the spirit of this grant program. GCE's goal is to tap the world's most creative minds to help solve some of the hardest challenges in global health and development. It provides staged funding beginning with USD $100,000 for research to test a bold idea followed by an opportunity to apply for up to USD $1 million if the initial results are promising. We have now funded over 1,000 projects in over 50 countries.

Here are some of the funded projects we are announcing from GCE application Round 13:

• Developing an inexpensive and simple temperature-monitoring baby bracelet that could signal the need for skin-to-skin contact and reduce the incidence of hypothermia in newborns
• Testing whether group prenatal care for women has a positive effect on maternal and child health when compared with traditional one-on-one prenatal care
• Testing whether the gestational age of infants can be determined by an automated analysis of the blood vessels in the retina using the camera on a mobile phone
• Determining whether quickly and easily monitoring eye movements in infants can be used to measure their neural development
• Generating a laboratory model of the human gut using intestinal stem cells and immune cells to better mimic the damaged and inflamed guts of young children in developing countries for testing new treatments

Please note that GCE Round 14 is still open for applications, and there are also grant opportunities open under GCE's parent grant program, Grand Challenges. You can view all these at the grant opportunities page at www.grandchallenges.org.

Great ideas come from everywhere.