Alison Bentley of the National Institute of Agricultural Botany and Ari Sadanandom of the University of Durham both in the United Kingdom will examine whether a new molecular link that they found explaining the increase in plant diseases (biotic factors) associated with high nutrient levels (abiotic factors) can be exploited to maximize wheat crop yield with minimal negative impact on the environment. Wheat, one of the first domesticated food crops, has been grown for over 10,000 years and is critically important to global food supply. Traditionally, crop yields are maximized by applying nitrogen fertilizer to stimulate growth, and fungicides and pesticides to prevent disease. These approaches are expensive and can harm the environment. Another complication is that increasing amounts of nitrogen fertilizer also increases the occurrence of disease. They have identified a group of transcription factors (TFs) - proteins that control expression of specific genes – that appear to protect plants against the fungus Septoria specifically under varying nitrogen levels. To investigate this, they will create transgenic wheat to increase or decrease each TF and explore the effect on disease resistance and growth in different concentrations of nitrogen. Understanding this relationship will allow them to boost plant resistance to disease under high growth conditions, and thereby optimize crop yield with maximal economic gain and minimal environmental impact.

Alizée Lozac'hmeur of Makesense in Paris will develop online mobile and web applications and provide opportunities to engage with experts and funders as part of a tailor-made approach to help young people learn about and solve the health and social issues that matter to them. They will integrate their digital platform, where participants can register their details and issue of interest, with a project database and events calendar to promote collaborations. Users will receive inspiration and advice and be informed of relevant opportunities by frequent emails or mobile phone messages to help them reach their goals. They will integrate the digital services, build a network of community organizers, and launch a marketing strategy to test their approach in France for engaging young people who are interested in solving a specific UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG).

Hussein Khalil of the Federal University of Bahia in Brazil will provide young people in urban slums with knowledge and tools to identify elements that promote the spread of diseases by rats and mosquitos such as dengue and Zika virus infection, and engage their communities to help combat those diseases. They will recruit 40 young residents from two urban slums to test their approach. The youth will be taught to map rat- and mosquito-infested areas and identify possible causes, such as poor waste disposal, by photographing their environments, and to use tools to track rat movements and insect breeding. They will also use gamification methods to stimulate learning and promote collaborations between the youth and adult residents to identify the most effective interventions. Once simple solutions have been identified, the youth will help to implement them in their community and produce and share progress reports using online and offline tools.

Rimjhim Aggarwal of Arizona State University in the U.S. will use a digital learning platform and teaching network to teach young people how to create 360-degree spherical imagery of field sites that function as virtual field trips to share their experiences about specific UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and better engage and teach others. These virtual field trips can be distributed on the internet, giving a large number of viewers the sense of actually being in the field, and are thus valuable teaching tools. However, they require specialized skills and equipment to create them. They will teach young people how to make them by holding a workshop to train 20 honors and undergraduate university students to create three new virtual field trips for local SDGs. These will then be presented to other students as part of a university course via a digital learning platform to evaluate their impact.