The Gates Foundation is part of the Grand Challenges partnership network. Visit <a href="https://www.grandchallenges.org" target="_blank">www.grandchallenges.org</a> to view the map of awarded grants across this network and grant opportunities from partners.

Grand Challenges supports exceptional scientists with the expertise to do breakthrough R&amp;D as well as the experience, networks, and skills to excel as scientific leaders. These champions co-create projects with global partners, mobilize key institutions in their countries, and improve public health in their communities and around the world.

Grand Challenges funds innovations to tackle the biggest problems in global health and development. Since 2004, through the Grand Challenges program, we have supported more than 2500 innovation projects in more than 90 countries.

For more than 20 years, Grand Challenges has built trusted relationships with global health funders and researchers. We tap into this powerful network to create unique scientific collaborations with a transformative impact on people's lives.

Innovation happens all along the journey from idea, to experiment, to product or policy, and finally to delivery at scale in communities. We fund innovation projects while supporting an environment of champions, systems, and partnerships to maximize the impact these projects make in people's lives.

The 4 Pillars of the Grand Challenges Ecosystem

Doing groundbreaking science requires the right mix of institutions, policies, and tools. Grand Challenges works with partners in low- and middle-income countries to build or strengthen the capacities they need to succeed in R&amp;D.

African Scientific Leaders Outline Focused Actions to Strengthen Health R&D

While national and regional policies have sought to address long-standing barriers within Africa’s R&D ecosystem, many challenges persist, particularly at the operational level. The Calestous Juma Science Leadership Fellows now outline actionable pathways to unlock Africa’s health research potential, actively calling on researchers, policymakers, implementers, funders, and governments to collaboratively contribute to reshaping and enabling the continent’s R&D landscape.In a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s44360-025-00015-8" target="_blank">commentary</a> recently published in Nature Health, the Fellows argue that “the challenges we face as Africans in the current rapidly changing international funding environment underscore the importance of engaging in relevant actions to collectively shape a bright future for African R&D.” The full paper can be found on <a href="https://gatesopenresearch.org/documents/9-59" target="_blank">Gates Open Research</a>.

Grand Challenges and Grand Challenges Global Call-to-Action grants were announced for requests for proposals launched at the 2022 Grand Challenges Annual Meeting, encompassing awards for 35 principal investigators in 22 different countries.

Grand Challenges and Grand Challenges Global Call-to-Action grants were announced for requests for proposals launched at the 2022 Grand Challenges Annual Meeting, encompassing awards for 35 principal investigators in 22 different countries.

Grand Challenges Initiatives Highlights - October 2023

2022 Grand Challenges Annual Meeting Call-to-Action

Kathryn Holt of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom and Senjuti Saha of the Child Health Research Foundation (CHRF) in Bangladesh, along with FTIR experts Luísa Peixe and Angela Novais from the University of Porto, will establish Fourier-Transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy in a pediatric microbiological diagnostics laboratory in Bangladesh to support clinical and infection control decisions.

Low-Cost Rapid Diagnostics and Typing for Clinical Microbiology Using Fourier-Transform Infrared (FTIR)

Grand Challenges

Grand Challenges Global Call-to-Action

Grand Challenges Annual Meeting

Photo Galleries

Photo Gallery

Strengthening Modeling and Analytics Capacity and Ecosystem for Women's Health

Esnat Chirwa of the South African Medical Research Council in South Africa will strengthen modeling and data science capacities by incorporating training and networking approaches, particularly for female researchers in Malawi and South Africa.

Strengthening Women's Research Networks and Capacity to Address Women's Health in Sub-Saharan Africa

Pathogen Genomic Surveillance and Immunology in Asia

Rifky Waluyajati Rachman of the West Java Provincial Health Laboratory in Indonesia will employ targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) to support genomic surveillance of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) in Indonesia.

Genomic Surveillance of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis in Indonesia

Daniel Kiboi of the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in Kenya will assess whether a novel mutation in the human malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, can be used as a marker to identify drug-resistant malaria and protect key antimalarial drugs.

Ferredoxin NADP+ Reductase and Links to Drug Resistance in Plasmodium falciparum

Amira Kebir of the Pasteur Institute of Tunis in Tunisia will create an African-based and -led learning and research network that links Francophone and Anglophone African research institutions to strengthen the capacity and ecosystem for modeling and analyzing women's health in Africa.

African Modeling and Analytics Academy for Women (AMAX)

Brigida Rusconi of Washington University in the U.S. will determine whether female infants develop long-lived antibodies against gut bacteria that subsequently both protect against bacterial infections and promote healthy gut immune and microbiota development in their offspring.

Physiologic Protective Antibodies to Gut Commensals in Humans

Berge Tsanou of the University of Dschang in Cameroon will support trainee mathematical modelers in epidemiology, particularly women, to strengthen capacity and to investigate health problems related to human papillomavirus (HPV) and cervical cancer (CC) in four Central-East African countries.

Central and Eastern Africa Female Health Oriented Modeling Consortium for HPV and Related Diseases 

Cameron Myhrvold of Princeton University and Mireille Kamariza of the University of California, Los Angeles, both in the U.S., will develop an assay to rapidly detect multiple drug resistance mutations in Plasmodium falciparum and Mycobacterium tuberculosis for malaria and tuberculosis (TB) surveillance, respectively.

Scalable Drug-Resistance Profiling of Tuberculosis and Malaria Using mCARMEN

Olayinka Omigbodun of the University of Ibadan in Nigeria will build a critical mass of female researchers and policymakers to adapt and apply diverse mathematical models to better understand the epidemiology of depression in young women in sub-Saharan Africa and identify more effective preventative measures and treatments.

Using Mathematical Modeling to Tackle Depression in Young Women in Sub-Saharan Africa

Supporting Researchers Through the Technologies of the Global Health Discovery Collaboratory Platforms

Senjuti Saha of the Child Health Research Foundation in Bangladesh will use a single-cell analytics platform to track the immune responses of babies before and after receiving a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine to determine the impact of various factors, including nutritional status and seasonality, on vaccine efficacy.

Investigating Variation in Response to Vaccines Using Single-Cell RNA-Sequencing

Jinal Bhiman of Wits Health Consortium (Pty) Ltd in South Africa and Jacqueline Weyer of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases also in South Africa will leverage a rapid monoclonal antibody (mAb) isolation and screening pipeline to develop diagnostics that differentiate between pathogens to support epidemic responses.

Establishment of an Immunodiagnostics Pipeline for Infectious Diseases in Africa

Abdoulaye Djimde of the University of Sciences, Techniques, and Technologies of Bamako in Mali will use a metabolomics platform to identify biomarkers to detect dormant Plasmodia hypnozoites in a previously malaria-infected individual as a diagnostic method and to screen for new therapeutics.

Characterization of Metabolites Associated with Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium Ovale Hypnozoites

Georgia Tomaras and Nathanial Chapman of Duke University and Girija Goyal and Don Ingber of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, both in the U.S., will test whether Organ-on-a-Chip technology can inform how antibodies protect humans from pathogen infections to design more effective vaccines.