On November 12, 2015, Grand Challenges Explorations grants were announced for 59 researchers from around the world. Each will receive $100,000 to conduct early-stage research projects focusing on one of six global health and development challenges selected for this Round.

On November 12, 2015, Grand Challenges Explorations grants were announced for 59 researchers from around the world. Each will receive $100,000 to conduct early-stage research projects focusing on one of six global health and development challenges selected for this Round.

Grand Challenges Explorations Round 15 Highlights

New Approaches for Addressing Outdoor/Residual Malaria Transmission (Round 15)

Szabolcs Marka of Columbia University in the U.S. will develop acoustic software to locate mosquito swarms by their sound, thereby allowing elimination of thousands of breeding vector mosquitos that can cause diseases such as malaria.

Acoustic Tracking of Mosquito Swarms for Vector Control

Malaria Transmission

Grand Challenges Explorations

Photo Galleries

Photo Gallery

Chase Beisel of North Carolina State University in the U.S. will exploit non-lytic bacteriophage for promoting infant gut health and treating enteric infections in low-resource settings.

Bacteriophage

Explore New Ways to Measure Delivery and Use of Digital Financial Services Data (Round 15)

Neil Patel of AwaazDe Infosystems Pvt Ltd in India will produce interactive podcasts that are sent by mobile phone to inform local users in India on relevant financial services and to collect their feedback on specific issues in audio form, making it more widely accessible.

Data Collection Through Interactive Audio Podcasts

Financial Services Data

Enable Merchant Acceptance of Mobile Money Payments (Round 15)

Christine Yee with Darpan Bohara and Yashna Sureka of Smith College in the U.S. will develop a fingerprint scanner that can link to phone networks and banks to enable merchants to easily and quickly accept mobile money payments in India.

Enabling Merchant Acceptance of Mobile Money Payments in Nelamangala, India

Mobile Money

Surveillance Tools, Diagnostics and an Artificial Diet to Support New Approaches to Vector Control (Round 15)

Heverton Dutra of Centro de Pesquisas René Rachou, FIOCRUZ in Brazil will develop an artificial diet based on protein and fat to sustain mosquitoes infected with the Wolbachia bacteria, which are needed in large numbers to prevent transmission of the dengue virus.

An Artificial Diet for Wolbachia-Infected Ae. aegypti

Mosquito Control

New Ways to Reduce Childhood Pneumonia Deaths Through Delivery of Timely Effective Treatment (Round 15)

Bastiaan Hoogendoorn at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom will develop a simple, inexpensive breath-testing device to measure the type and levels of bacteria in the lungs for rapid diagnosis of pneumonia in children in low-resource settings.

A Point-of-Care Instrument for Rapid Diagnosis of Pneumonia

Pneumonia

Addressing Newborn and Infant Gut Health Through Bacteriophage-Mediated Microbiome Engineering (Round 15)

Haiqing Sheng and collaborators Carolyn Bohach and Scott Minnich from the University of Idaho in the U.S. will exploit the CRISPR-Cas9 (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats and CRISPR-associated protein 9) system in a dual approach to combat enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) infections.

CRISPR-Cas-Directed Bacteriophage Treatment of Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) Diarrhea

Paula Hidalgo-Sanchis and team at Pulse Lab Kampala – UN Global Pulse in Uganda will develop software that can transform raw data on mobile money use in developing countries into user-friendly formats to inform policymakers and researchers to help expand the field.

Exploring Mobile Money Transaction Data

Brandyce St. Laurent of the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. will test whether cow-baited tents can be used to monitor and control disease-causing mosquitoes in the Greater Mekong Subregion.

Cow-Baited Tents as a Monitoring and Intervention Tool

Jennifer Stutsman and Jessica Vernon of Miti Health in the U.S. will encourage chemists and pharmacies to accept mobile money in Kenya by integrating their tailored software application with an established mobile payment system, and providing automatic registration and financial incentives.

Increasing Use of Mobile Payments Among Kenya's Chemists

Bradley Willenberg at the University of Central Florida in the U.S. will design a simple trap that works without electricity to help survey local vector mosquito populations and uses a color change to signal the presence of human disease-causing pathogens.

New Unpowered Attract-Diagnose-Kill Surveillance Traps

Patricia Hibberd of Massachusetts General Hospital in the U.S. will develop a low-cost thermal imaging system for a smart phone to diagnose bacterial pneumonia in children from developing countries where the standard chest X-ray is often unavailable.

Thermal Images of the Lung on a Smart Phone to Differentiate Bacterial from Non-bacterial Causes of Pneumonia

Anika Kinkhabwala of EpiBiome in the U.S. will exploit the development of resistance to bacteriophage by pathogenic bacteria to improve children’s gut health. Bacteriophage recognize proteins and other molecules found on the surface of bacteria, which they use to infect and kill them.

Life or virulence? Phage Cocktails That Make Bacteria Choose

Margaret McConnell of Harvard University and Mindy Hernandez of Mobiles4All (M4A) in the U.S. will generate rich datasets related to mobile phone use in Africa by providing mobile phones and incentives for users to share data.

Mobiles4All: New Users, New Insights, Better Data

Brian Foy of Colorado State University in the U.S. will use antibodies that bind essential proteins in the mosquito Anopheles in order to block malaria transmission.

Development of a Pan-Anti-Anopheles Livestock Vaccine

Paul Young of the University of Queensland in Australia will monitor mosquito populations using ultra bright nanoparticles coated with selected monoclonal antibodies to detect associated microbes such as Wolbachia, coupled with a low-cost readout device.

Next-Gen Monitoring of Infected Mosquitos in the Field

Jonathan Rubin of the University of Michigan in the U.S. will develop a simple, low-cost ultrasound device with cell phone display that can diagnose children with co-existing pneumonia and malnutrition.