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Grand Challenges is a family of initiatives fostering innovation to solve key global health and development problems. Each initiative is an experiment in the use of challenges to focus innovation on making an impact. Individual challenges address some of the same problems, but from differing perspectives.

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Testing an Integrated and Innovative Women-Centered Homestead Food Production Model as a Means to Improve Food Security, Nutrition and Women's Empowerment in Cambodia for Future Scale Up

Hou KroeunHelen Keller International (Cambodia)Kampong Cham, Cambodia
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
22 Dec 2015

Hou Kroeun of the Cambodia office of Helen Keller International will evaluate the additional impact of promoting gender equality on households’ food security and health. They will recruit households spanning 180 rural communities in Kampong Cham Province to evaluate the impact of a gender-transformative Enhanced Homestead Food Production intervention, which will provide agricultural training and resources through primary contact with the female head of household, as well as sessions addressing gender issues with all main-decision makers in the family. They will then test the impact of this women-centered approach on household food security and nutritional status.

Ensure Year-Wise Nutritional Food Security to Indian Women Through Community Level Implementation of Domestic Solar Conduction Dryer

Vaibhav TidkeScience for SocietyAurangabad, , India
Grand Challenges India
Agriculture and Nutrition
15 Dec 2015

The project aims to ensure food-security throughout the entire year in a rural district by storing food through an innovative technology known as the Solar Conduction Dryer. It also aims to add extra income to women farmers from the sale of the dehydrated products of this technology, while providing valuable lessons in post-harvest losses.

Understanding Outcomes of Acutely Ill Undernourished Children

Ezekiel MupereCase Western Reserve UniversityCleveland, Ohio, United States
Grand Challenges
All Children Thriving
11 Dec 2015

GAP Year Program (Girls Achieve Power) - Using Sport to Empower Girls at Critical Time of Adolescent Transition

Saiqa MullickWits Health Consortium (Proprietary) LimitedSouth Africa
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
3 Dec 2015

Saiqa Mullick of Wits Reproductive Health & HIV Research Institute (RHI) in South Africa, along with Grass Root Soccer (GRS), Sonke Gender Justice, and the Population Council, will empower adolescent girls in South African townships as they progress in education by increasing their educational, health, social, and economic assets, while at the same time shifting gender attitudes and encouraging positive behavior among adolescent boys. The “Girls Achieve Power” (GAP) Year Program will work with schools and communities to encourage a culture of health and safety, and promote school retention among adolescent girls. Using soccer as a program platform, and enlisting local coaches as facilitators, the program will enable a healthy and productive progression for adolescent girls through secondary school. Aside from these direct benefits, the program will also expand the evidence base around the impact of asset-building approaches for adolescent girls.

A Novel Nano-Iron Supplement (IHAT) to Safely Combat Iron Deficiency and Anemia (IDA)

Andrew PrenticeMedical Research CouncilSwindon, United Kingdom
Grand Challenges
Global Health Interventions
30 Nov 2015

Andrew Prentice of the Medical Research Council in the United Kingdom will conduct a phase II clinical trial to test the ability of a unique nano iron compound to safely and more effectively treat iron-deficiency anemia in children. Iron-deficiency anemia is a common condition particularly in women and children in resource-poor settings and can be deadly. Current iron supplements have limited effects in these settings and undesirable side effects including increasing the risk of infectious diarrhea in children which causes severe morbidity and mortality. They previously developed a compound iron hydroxide adipate tartrate that acts like dietary iron as it can be directly absorbed in humans keeping it away from any resident intestinal pathogens that also use it as a nutrient source. They will perform an intervention study with 600 iron-deficient anemic children in The Gambia and compare their compound with the current supplement to see if it can normalize iron levels without the side effects.

Normalizing Tuberculosis Granuloma Vasculature and Matrix to Improve Drug Delivery and Efficacy

Rakesh JainGeneral Hospital CorporationBoston, Massachusetts, United States
Grand Challenges
Global Health Interventions
23 Nov 2015

Rakesh Jain of Massachusetts General Hospital in the U.S. will develop a new treatment strategy for tuberculosis to boost the activity of existing anti-tuberculosis drugs. Tuberculosis is one of the most infectious diseases in the world. Current treatments are lengthy poorly tolerated and do not eradicate latent infections which are found in around one third of the general population and contribute to drug resistance. During latent infection the tuberculosis bacteria are dormant and reside in small inflammatory areas in the lungs known as granulomas. These granulomas are surrounded by abnormal blood vessels and dense tissue that they hypothesize make it difficult for drugs to permeate. They will use a small animal disease model and patient lung samples to test whether co-treatment with anti-angiogenics and anti-fibrotics can normalize the blood vessels and improve the delivery of anti-tuberculosis drugs thereby increasing their activity and potentially shortening treatment duration.

Umodzi - Men, Women, Boys and Girls in Alliance to Achieve Gender Equality

Thokozani MwenyekondeCAREAtlanta, Georgia, United States
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
19 Nov 2015

Thokozani Mwenyekonde from CARE in Malawi is implementing the Umodzi project to promote gender equality for women and girls by engaging adolescent girls and boys, along with supportive adult male and female role models, to integrate gender equitable attitudes and behavior in schools as a basis for changing attitudes nationwide. Umodzi, which means "oneness" in the local Chichewa language, will build upon and adapt existing gender equality approaches including integrating efforts into the school curriculum, training teachers who convene teen club meetings, and working with adults who are also engaged in CARE's pro-women agriculture and savings programs in the school catchment areas.

Digital Sub-Wallets for Increased Financial Empowerment of Women

Lauren HendricksCAREAtlanta, Georgia, United States
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
19 Nov 2015

Lauren Hendricks and team at CARE in Uganda will analyze whether motivating women to use mobile financial technology increases their involvement in making household financial decisions, and subsequently improves family health and education. They will develop mobile money subwallets for specific purposes such as school fees and pregnancy so that women can more securely manage their savings. They will also work with influential members of a subset of households to help promote gender equality and develop a consensus towards a household financial action plan.

Promoting Female Empowerment at the Household Level with Family Planning Use, Financial Literacy and Gender Sensitization Education Among Couples in Ibadan, Nigeria

Funmilola OlaOlorunUniversity of Ibadan, College of MedicineIbadan, Nigeria
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
18 Nov 2015

Funmilola OlaOlorun of the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and Neetu John of the International Center for Research on Women, in the U.S. will conduct a cluster randomized control trial to evaluate a multi-pronged approach for empowering Nigerian women within the household and thereby the wider community. Their program targets both partners of couples, both individually and together, and involves training on gender socialization and finance, and access to family planning. The aim is to generate rigorous evidence on how to promote gender equality in household decision-making and improve family health and wellbeing.

A Synthetic Biology Platform for Rapid Generation of Highly Diverse Natural Product-Like Compounds Active Against Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Mike TyersUniversité de MontréalMontreal, Quebec, Canada
Grand Challenges
Global Health Interventions
18 Nov 2015

Michael Tyers of the University of Montreal in Canada will develop a synthetic biology platform to generate vast libraries of natural product-like compounds and use them to identify new drugs for tuberculosis. Traditional drug discovery screens require expensive chemical libraries that are limited in size and scope. Many existing drugs are derived from the natural products of microbes which perform a wide variety of biological functions. This functional diversity is reflected by their structural diversity which is generated by the combinatorial action of hundreds of thousands of different enzymes. They will exploit this natural manufacturing process for the relatively simple and low-cost production of millions to billions of chemically-diverse natural product-like compounds. This will be achieved by expressing different combinations of the enzymes in yeast artificial chromosomes which then allows screening directly in the yeast without the need for costly and time-consuming chemical extraction and purification. Using this approach they will perform a pilot screen to identify new compounds that inhibit the growth of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis.

Girls for Health: Empowering Rural Girls' Transition from School to Employment as Health Workers

Fatima AdamuFederal University Birnin KebbiBirnin Kebbi, Nigeria
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
16 Nov 2015

Fatima Adamu from the Federal University Birnin Kebbi in Nigeria will support the transition of adolescent girls from secondary school into heath-related careers such as medicine, midwifery, and nursing to address the shortage of female health workers specifically in rural northern Nigeria. Social norms dictate that women only receive reproductive care from females, so a shortage means that many, particularly in the North, do not receive any health care during pregnancy. Additionally, women who pursue careers are more likely to have children later, which is associated with a healthier life. They will integrate existing and new education strategies, including coaching particularly female teachers in student-centered learning methods, to improve core academic and vocational training, and enhance life skills for girls. Their approach will be tested using a controlled trial.

Epigenetic and Biological Markers of Preterm Birth, Fetal Growth, Early Childhood Growth and Neurodevelopment: Expanding the Scope of AMANHI Pregnancy Biorepository Cohort

Rajiv BahlWorld Health OrganizationGeneva, Switzerland
Grand Challenges
All Children Thriving
14 Nov 2015

Empowering Women and Increasing Sanitation: Making the Rural WASH Market Work

Sarah van BoekhoutWaterSHED CambodiaPhnom Penh, Cambodia
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
11 Nov 2015

Sarah van Boekhout and the team of WaterSHED in Cambodia will further catalyze the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) market by developing a women’s mentorship network and a special marketing program in order to improve the productivity and decision-making power of women in rural Cambodia. This project focuses on the success of female entrepreneurs in the market for WASH products and sevices. Members of the capacity-building and mentorship network, branded as the WEwork collective, will receive support and training on personal, professional, and community leadership; business planning; and financial literacy. This approach will be tested with more than 200 women across eight target provinces in Cambodia, and will emphasize community-driven peer coaching and support. WaterSHED will also reshape WASH marketing tools and strategies in order to better reach rural women consumers and to promote the success of business women in the supply chain. The outcomes of this project will better inform the design of women’s economic empowerment programs worldwide.

A Win-Win for Gender, Agriculture and Nutrition: Testing a Gender-Transformative Approach from Asia in Africa

Laurent UwumuremyiCAREAtlanta, Georgia, United States
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
10 Nov 2015

Laurent Uwumuremyi and team at CARE in Burundi will evaluate the impact of an intensive gender transformative approach among women smallholder farmers relative to a current “gender-light” approach for delivering income, food security and women’s empowerment outcomes through agricultural development interventions. Their transformative approach focuses more deeply on gender by generating awareness of the issues, building personal skills, and directly challenging underlying inequalities through dialogue and collective action involving male relatives and the wider community. They will train facilitators and recruit a total of 7,500 women in two provinces in Burundi for a four-year study. The research will provide essential evidence-based policy recommendations for the agricultural sector to help improve global food security and well-being.

ListenUp: Amplifying Girls' Voices Through Sanitary Pads and Health Information

Elizabeth OmbechZanaAfrica GroupNairobi, Kenya
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
10 Nov 2015

Elizabeth Ombech of ZanaAfrica Group Ltd. in Kenya seeks to implement safe, accurate, and cost-effective reproductive health innovations for girls—in the form of disposable sanitary pads coupled with girl-centered reproductive health information and resources—and to evaluate this approach against traditional facilitation-based methods for impact on girls’ educational attainment, sexual behavior, reproductive health, and self-determination in order to expand the global evidence base surrounding the role of menstrual health-focused interventions in gender parity, health, and development.

Pre-Clinical Development of a Pan-Species Multi-Stage Universal Vaccine for the Malaria Eradication Agenda

Louis SchofieldJames Cook UniversityCairns, Queensland, Australia
Grand Challenges
Global Health Interventions
9 Nov 2015

Louis Schofield of James Cook University in Australia will develop a broad-spectrum malaria vaccine that is effective against different life-cycle stages of multiple species of the causative Plasmodium parasite. More than one third of the world's population is at risk of contracting malaria. However developing an effective vaccine is challenging because humans are infected by five quite distinct Plasmodium species. In addition the parasites pass through very different developmental stages including sporozoites which mosquitoes inject into the human bloodstream a disease-causing blood stage and a transmissible sexual stage. Using Grand Challenges Explorations funding they have already identified a surface oligosaccharide antigen conserved in several Plasmodium species that when combined with generic carriers and adjuvants can generate a strong immune response that blocks several life-cycle stages in animal models. They will perform further key preclinical evaluations to determine the full efficacy of the vaccine and whether it should proceed to testing in humans.

The Fifth H: Her - Empowering Girls Through 4-H's Methodology of "Learning by Doing"

Appiah Kwaku Boateng4-H GhanaKoforidua, Ghana
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
6 Nov 2015

Appiah Kwaku Boateng of 4-H Ghana in Ghana will support 600 new and existing 4-H school and community clubs in Ghana, which teach livelihood and life skills such as business planning, farming and communication, with a stronger focus on girls. This will serve to enhance the economic and education opportunities particularly for young girls who are more vulnerable to unemployment. They will recruit and train more women to run the clubs and engage girls by acting as mentors, and to act as district advisers. They aim to develop a successful approach that can then be implemented across Africa.

Smart Payment Schemes as a Gateway to Women's Financial Inclusion and Socioeconomic Empowerment

Rohini PandeHarvard UniversityCambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
3 Nov 2015

Rohini Pande of Harvard University in the U.S. will conduct two large-scale randomized controlled trials (RCTs) which will investigate whether female-friendly modifications to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGS) program in India can improve program efficiency and increase rural women's employment, financial inclusion, and empowerment. They will also test the efficacy of transparency tools to document wage payment delays to understanding whether holding local implementers accountable can decrease payment delays to women.

Engineering Hurdles: Mitigating Bacteriophage-Resistance

Samuel AlcaineUniversity of Massachusetts AmherstAmherst, Massachusetts, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Bacteriophage
1 Nov 2015

Samuel Alcaine of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the U.S. will engineer bacteriophage (viruses that infect bacteria) to produce an antimicrobial compound that helps avoid bacteria such as enteroaggregative Escherichia coli developing resistance to the phage, thereby increasing their value for treating associated childhood diseases. Phage could be valuable for treating intestinal diseases that cause severe morbidity and mortality in developing countries as they can selectively destroy pathogenic bacteria. However, some bacteria rapidly develop resistance to the phage, which renders them useless. By inducing phage-infected bacteria to also release a toxic substance (bacteriocin), this would destroy any potentially resistant neighboring bacteria. They will engineer T7 bacteriophage to express one of two selected bacteriocins and test their ability to circumvent phage resistance in E. coli.

A SIM Overlay Platform to Extend Phone Payments Offline

Ross AndersonUniversity of Cambridge Computer LaboratoryCambridge, United Kingdom
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mobile Money
1 Nov 2015

Ross Anderson at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom will develop technology to enable secure offline phone-to-phone and card-to-phone payments between customers and merchants. The ability to use mobile phones to make and receive payments has expanded access to secure financial services in low-resource settings. However, the requirement of a network connection makes it particularly problematic in rural communities. They will develop SIM overlay technology, modern cryptography and audio coupling to securely transfer payments offline also from a SIM format payment card for those without a phone. Merchants can then bank the payments periodically whenever they have a network connection. They will evaluate their prototype for usability and security, and work towards interoperability across countries so that migrant workers can also use it.

Tissue Oxygen Saturation in Malnutrition and Pneumonia

Mark AnserminoUniversity of British ColumbiaVancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Grand Challenges Explorations
Pneumonia
1 Nov 2015

Mark Ansermino of The University of British Columbia in Canada will adapt near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) for the simple diagnosis and monitoring of children at increased risk of mortality from pneumonia. Children with moderate to severe malnutrition who develop pneumonia are far more likely to die than more nourished children, but diagnosing pneumonia in these individuals is problematic, likely due in part to muscle wasting that masks the classic symptoms of fast breathing and chest indrawing. NIRS is non-invasive and portable, and can rapidly measure tissue oxygenation levels, which will be reduced by oxidative stress in children with malnutrition. They will collect arm muscle saturation data using NIRS on 200 children under five years old admitted for lung infections at a clinic in Uganda, and use the data to design a prototype device and protocols for identifying at risk children.

Digital Merchant On-Boarding in Uganda

Ronald AzairwePegasus Technologies LimitedKampala, Uganda
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mobile Money
1 Nov 2015

Ronald Azairwe of Pegasus Technologies Ltd. in Uganda will develop an online portal coupled with attractive incentives to recruit merchants and train them to accept mobile money in Uganda. Current methods of recruitment are slow and require multiple in-person visits, which can be difficult in remote areas. The portal will enable merchants to register online and an incentive structure will be developed to reward merchants based on transaction volume. They will test their portal by advertising to merchants in one urban and one rural location where large numbers of employees receive their salary in mobile money, thereby boosting demand for merchants to accept mobile money. They will also provide an online and phone-based helpline.

Lytic Bacteriophages: Stabilizing the Gut Microbiome

Paul BarrowUniversity of NottinghamLoughborough, United Kingdom
Grand Challenges Explorations
Bacteriophage
1 Nov 2015

Paul Barrow of the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom will identify bacteriophage (viruses that infect bacteria) that can reduce the presence of multiple pathogenic bacteria in the gut to restore healthy bacterial populations (microbiome) and help treat diarrheal diseases. They will characterize phage specificity for three major pathogens that infect both humans and pigs, and select those that are less likely to cause the development of resistance. As pigs are a valuable model for diarrheal diseases in children, they will test the selected phage in their pig enteric model to evaluate their ability to reduce pathogen numbers and restore a healthy gut microbiome.

A Bacteriophage Platform for Programmable Killing of Bacteria

Chase BeiselNorth Carolina State UniversityRaleigh, North Carolina, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Bacteriophage
1 Nov 2015

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. Generally, lytic phage are being studied for treating diseases, but they suffer from a number of limitations including causing resistance and the release of endotoxins, which can damage healthy cells. They will use the CRISPR-Cas9 defense system to engineer non-lytic P1 phage to specifically target the bacteria Shigella sonnei, which is a leading cause of enteric diseases in children in the developing world. The engineered phage, which can be produced at low cost, will be tested for ability to efficiently infect and kill the targeted bacteria.

Billions of Transactions, Thousands of Photos: Combining Mobile Network Operator Data with Crowd-Sourced Photographs to Measure the Availability and Use of Digital Financial Services

Joshua BlumenstockUniversity of WashingtonSeattle, Washington, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Financial Services Data
1 Nov 2015

Joshua Blumenstock of the University of Washington in the U.S. will combine data on mobile phone call details and mobile money use with photographs taken of local infrastructures such as electricity supply, to map access to and use of digital financial services in Ghana. They have access to vast anonymized datasets on phone and mobile money transactions in Ghana, and a technology platform developed by Premise that collects photographs and observations from local citizens to measure economic and social infrastructures. They will develop a method to combine these data and apply standard machine learning in order to measure access to digital financial services across the country.

Disrupting Steroid Signals in Adult Anopheles

Flaminia CatterucciaPresident and Fellows of Harvard CollegeCambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Malaria Transmission
1 Nov 2015

Flaminia Catteruccia of President and Fellows of Harvard College in the U.S. will produce fabrics and nets treated with the dibenzoylhydrazine (DBH) compound methoxyfenozide, which is toxic to malaria-transmitting mosquitoes, to prevent these insects from entering households and spreading disease. The compound is non-toxic to mammals but disrupts steroid signaling pathways in the mosquito, which is a different mechanism than existing insecticides, reducing lifespan and causing sterility. They will combine it with insecticide and evaluate different formulations on geographically diverse mosquito species in the laboratory. The best formulations will then be tested on specific field-collected outdoor mosquito populations from southern Africa.

Affordable and Accurate Malnutrition Diagnostic Device

Pavan DadlaniPhilips ResearchEindhoven, Netherlands
Grand Challenges Explorations
Pneumonia
1 Nov 2015

Pavan Dadlani of Phillips Research in The Netherlands will create a handheld three-dimensional scanner that can automatically analyze body shape and assess malnutrition in young children, which is a strong risk factor for mortality associated with a variety of common diseases. Current physical measurements of children to assess nutritional status are time-consuming, uncomfortable for the child, and difficult to take accurately, particularly in low-resource settings. They will develop and test an algorithm for measuring height, upper arm length, and circumference of the head, belly and upper arm from a three dimensional image, by collecting data from children between 0 and 5 years old. They will also produce a user-friendly design for health workers by conducting a field analysis in low-resource settings.

Merchant Acquiring and Mobile Payments Platform (Mampp) for Shops and Points of Sale

Akinola DixonRoja Payment Solutions Limited (a Qrios Company)Lagos, Nigeria
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mobile Money
1 Nov 2015

Akinola Dixon of Qrios Networks in Nigeria will simplify mobile money payments by building a platform incorporating a unique digital identity for all customer accounts and merchants, and leveraging a stable carrier signaling network using low-cost, automated communication technologies. When a merchant wishes to sell goods, the platform generates a unique payment code for the consumer to authorize on their mobile phone, and the money is transferred. They will research the requirements for their approach, design the required software, and test their platform.

An Artificial Diet for Wolbachia-Infected Ae. aegypti

Heverton DutraCentro de Pesquisas René Rachou - FIOCRUZBelo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mosquito Control
1 Nov 2015

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. These mosquitoes are currently being bred using vertebrate blood, which is difficult to obtain and store, and subject to stringent regulations. They will test variations of cholesterol and amino acids combined with the mixture of bovine serum albumin and phagostimulant that is known to support egg production in non-infected mosquitoes, on egg numbers laid by Wolbachia-infected females. The diet is relatively low cost and comprises widely available ingredients that could be used to support mass-rearing of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes.

Barcoded Insect Screens to Optimize Articial Diets

Koen DecheringTropIQ Health SciencesNijmegen, Netherlands
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mosquito Control
1 Nov 2015

Koen Dechering of TropIQ in The Netherlands will produce an artificial meal for breeding blood-feeding mosquitoes more easily and effectively in the lab. They will develop a high-throughput screening approach using molecular barcodes carried by endosymbiont bacteria that each tag an individual meal consumed by a live mosquito. The barcodes can then be used to identify those meals that best promote egg laying and longevity from a large pool of test foods. They will rationally design the protein and lipid compositions of the test foods for their screen by using mass spectrometry on blood-fed mosquitoes. Optimized diets identified from the screen will be further validated and analyzed for stability also at tropical ambient temperatures.

Combining Phages with CRISPR for Ecological Vaccination

Kevin EsveltPresident and Fellows of Harvard CollegeCambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Bacteriophage
1 Nov 2015

Kevin Esvelt of President and Fellows of Harvard College in the U.S. will use CRISPR technology to make protective healthy bacteria resistant to phage so they can outcompete pathogenic bacteria that cause childhood diarrhea and stunting. He will develop a method to make the protective Nissle 1917 strain of E. coli resistant to a range of phage, and use it to replace native E. coli strains in the guts of young mice as a model for human infants. This approach will provide long-term protection against pathogenic bacterial infections at low cost.

Disarming Type III Secretion System of Enteric Pathogens

Alessio FasanoMassachusetts General HospitalBoston, Massachusetts, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Bacteriophage
1 Nov 2015

Alessio Fasano of Massachusetts General Hospital in the U.S. will isolate bacteriophage (viruses that infect bacteria) that specifically kill pathogenic Escherichia coli and Shigella bacteria, which cause environmental enteropathy and other potentially deadly childhood diseases. They will perform a high-throughput screen using a diverse phage library to isolate phage that specifically target the type-III secretion system expressed by enteric pathogens like E. coli. They will also test an alternative approach by constructing phage to carry so-called CRISPR-Cas9 nucleases that they will engineer to target and cleave bacterial type-III secretion system genes. Results from both approaches will be tested for their capacity to selectively kill enteric pathogens and inhibit infection in a human organoid model, which consists of different cell layers to mimic the structure and function of the human gut.

Finance Application Tool

Ruth FosterTIWA, LLCScottsdale, Arizona, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mobile Money
1 Nov 2015

Ruth Foster of TIWA, LLC in the U.S. will develop a finance application tool using money pictures to enable illiterate users to make accurate transactions. They will design and test a tablet with touch screen and build associated software for consumers that can be used to scan barcodes, or manually add products and prices. The final cost of the purchases will be automatically displayed using images of real money, which the consumer can then use to pay the correct amount.

Development of a Pan-Anti-Anopheles Livestock Vaccine

Brian FoyColorado State UniversityFort Collins, Colorado, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Malaria Transmission
1 Nov 2015

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. They have already produced antibodies that bind conserved mosquito antigens such as the glutamate-gated chloride channel and used them to supplement blood meals, which was lethal to feeding mosquitoes. They will test whether cattle injected with these antigens produce the corresponding antibodies that are also lethal to the mosquitoes that feed off them.

BIOTOPE - Biomarkers to Diagnose Pneumonia

Joe GallagherUniversity College DublinDublin, Ireland
Grand Challenges Explorations
Pneumonia
1 Nov 2015

Joe Gallagher together with Chris Watson of University College Dublin in Ireland will develop a method to quickly and accurately diagnose bacterial pneumonia in children with acute respiratory infections so that the correct treatments can be given. Physical symptoms of bacterial pneumonia are similar to many other diseases including malaria but they require vastly different treatments. They will use a screening approach to identify protein, metabolite or miRNA biomarkers of bacterial pneumonia in blood and urine samples from 500 children in Malawi clinics with a known diagnosis of pneumonia. The most specific biomarker panel will be combined with a selected panel of symptoms such as heart and breathing rate to generate a highly sensitive clinical prediction model that specifically diagnoses bacterial pneumonia and can be used in low- to middle-income countries.

Phage Therapy in a Weaned Piglet Model of Enteropathy

Jason GillTexas A&M AgriLife ResearchCollege Station, Texas, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Bacteriophage
1 Nov 2015

Jason Gill of Texas A&M AgriLife Research in the U.S. will develop an animal model for environmental enteropathy, which is a chronic inflammatory condition of the gut prevalent in children from low-income countries, to test new bacteriophage-based treatments. Bacteriophage (phage) are viruses that infect and can kill bacteria, and can therefore be used to treat bacterial diseases. They will develop a chronic disease model by infecting weaned piglets with low doses of enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli, which is likely involved in environmental enteropathy development in humans. They will also search for a combination of different phage types that can infect and destroy this bacterial strain and effectively cure the disease in their animal model.

Smart Mobile Prepaid Debit Card

Jean-claude Gouesseecash expressBlaineville, Quebec, Canada
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mobile Money
1 Nov 2015

Jean-Claude Gouesse of Ecash Express in Canada will promote the use of mobile money in the Ivory Coast by establishing mobile money payment options for merchants to purchase supplies, and providing a free prepaid debit card for customers to pay for goods. When merchants can use mobile money to buy their own goods, they may also be more willing to receive mobile money payments from their own customers, particularly if they earn commission. They will build a user-friendly interface, and evaluate uptake by issuing 10,000 prepaid cards that can be loaded at participating retail stores, and providing 500 free, low-end Android devices to merchants for accepting payments.

Mobiles4All: New Users, New Insights, Better Data

Margaret McConnellMobiles4AllScottsdale, Arizona, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Financial Services Data
1 Nov 2015

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. These datasets are of value to policymakers to promote the use of mobile money. They are collaborating with mobile network operator Vodacom Mozambique, behavioral scientists at Harvard University and developmental experts. They will run a pilot test, offering at-cost smart phones to 5,000 low-income customers in Mozambique, and evaluate the value of offering rewards in exchange for completing phone-based surveys. These surveys will be far quicker and simpler and cost less than traditional population-based surveys. They will combine the survey data with mobile network data, and package the results into a simple dashboard that can inform about mobile money use and how it might be enhanced.

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

Patricia HibberdMassachusetts General HospitalBoston, Massachusetts, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Pneumonia
1 Nov 2015

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. They predict that children with pneumonia specifically caused by bacteria will have asymmetric “hot spots” of high temperatures in the lungs caused by localized inflammation. They will perform a proof-of-concept study in children under age 5 with chest infections in a large hospital in Malawi using the FLIR One Thermal Imaging System attached to a smartphone. At least 10 thermal images will be taken, and two short videos to record breathing rate, and the data will be used to develop statistical approaches for the required analytics. They will evaluate performance for diagnosing pneumonia by comparing it to the standard chest X-ray.

Exploring Mobile Money Transaction Data

Paula Hidalgo-SanchisPulse Lab Kampala - UN Global PulseKampala, Uganda
Grand Challenges Explorations
Financial Services Data
1 Nov 2015

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. They will collect mobile money and call detail records from two collaborating network providers, while ensuring privacy of users. In parallel, they will collect complementary datasets such as household survey data to enrich the value of the financial services data. They will process the data to evaluate the relationship between mobile money usage and, for example, geographical location or local economic and environmental factors.

The Phageome of Environmental Enteropathy

Lori HoltzWashington University in St. LouisSt. Louis, Missouri, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Bacteriophage
1 Nov 2015

Lori Holtz of Washington University in the U.S. will analyze the composition of bacteriophage (viruses that infect bacteria) in the gut of young children to see if it is linked with the chronic inflammatory gut condition, environmental enteropathy, which is highly prevalent in low-income countries and is linked to malnutrition and stunted growth. They will perform metagenomic sequencing on available fecal samples taken over a 6-month period from 489 children under age two from Malawi who were tested for gut dysfunction. They will analyze both RNA and DNA bacteriophage populations as well as the bacterial microbiome and evaluate their association with each other and with the development of environmental enteropathy. Specific bacteriophage associated with the presence or absence of the disease could lead to the development of new treatments.

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

Bastiaan HoogendoornCardiff UniversityCardiff, United Kingdom
Grand Challenges Explorations
Pneumonia
1 Nov 2015

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. Rather than condensing the exhaled breath, which can cause variation, the device directly captures respiratory fluid droplets containing non-volatile pathogen markers. These markers can then be identified using low-cost commercially available bioassay kits. They will analyze biomarker levels in the breath of sick and healthy children, and test and refine the design of their prototype.

Smartphone Image Processing to Assess Childhood Malnutrition

Heba KhamisUniversity of New South WalesSydney, New South Wales, Australia
Grand Challenges Explorations
Pneumonia
1 Nov 2015

Heba Khamis of the University of New South Wales in Australia will use smartphone technology to more accurately measure malnutrition in children from developing countries, which puts them at increased risk of death from diseases such as pneumonia. They will develop an image-processing algorithm for calculating three key growth parameters (height, and arm and head circumference) and thereby assessing nutritional status from a photograph of a child taken by a smartphone. They will recruit twenty children to help refine the algorithm and the protocol for taking the photograph, which will then be validated on an independent set of children.

Assessing Malnutrition in Pneumonia using BIVA

Carina KingInstitute for Global HealthLondon, United Kingdom
Grand Challenges Explorations
Pneumonia
1 Nov 2015

Carina King of the Institute for Global Health in the United Kingdom will use bioelectric impedance vector analysis (BIVA) to measure nutritional status in children with pneumonia in Malawi in order to improve treatment. Malnutrition is strongly associated with poor prognosis in pneumonia but is difficult to accurately assess. BIVA measures bioelectric properties to predict physiological parameters such as hydration and body mass of specific body regions. They will develop a protocol and evaluate BIVA for assessing nutritional status in children with pneumonia compared to current assessment methods. They will also lead focal discussion groups to evaluate related knowledge and likely acceptance of the protocol by health workers and care staff. Finally they will conduct a pilot training program on the technology for health care workers.

Life or virulence? Phage Cocktails That Make Bacteria Choose

Anika KinkhabwalaEpiBiomeSouth San Francisco, California, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Bacteriophage
1 Nov 2015

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. They will identify bacteriophage isolated from fecal and sewage samples that can target virulence structures on the surface of the pathogenic bacteria enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) and Shigella dysenteriae, which are common diarrhea-causing bacteria. Faced with such bacteriophage, pathogenic bacterial populations would become enriched with mutants that escaped phage infection by virtue of having lost these virulence factors, with resistant bacteria thereby less harmful to humans. They will characterize how these bacteria develop resistance to specific phage and build a cocktail of phage that target different bacterial virulence structures to further weaken pathogenic bacteria and help cure diarrheal disease.

Direct Mobile Consumer Data Collection Tool

Chris LockeCaribou Digital (UK) LtdFarnham, United Kingdom
Grand Challenges Explorations
Financial Services Data
1 Nov 2015

Chris Locke of Caribou Digital (UK) Ltd. in the United Kingdom will develop a small set of applications for smart phone users in developing countries to put them in control of providing anonymous data on their mobile phone use in near real-time to aid analysis and research by donors and governments. The applications will be able to record digital financial transactions and other phone-based activities such as content browsing to provide additional context and thereby enrich the data. They will develop the software for testing on a panel of users in Kenya, and collect and analyze the data.

Enabling a Harmonized Merchant Experience in Uganda

Ken KinyuaKopo Kopo, Inc.Spokane, Washington, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mobile Money
1 Nov 2015

Ken Kinyua of Kopo Kopo Inc. in the U.S. has developed a software platform that gives particularly lower-income merchants in Uganda the possibility to receive every type of mobile money service on the market by registering with only one bank. This will promote the use of mobile money, which will also benefit the banks and mobile network operators, and both simplify and secure transactions for both the merchants and the consumers. They have licensed their software to a partner bank and will support implementation and uptake by providing personnel to establish the necessary services and expertise, and by advertising the facility to prospective merchants.

A Rapid Field Test for Detecting Infected Mosquitoes

Joanne MacdonaldUniversity of the Sunshine CoastSippy Downs, Queensland, Australia
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mosquito Control
1 Nov 2015

Joanne Macdonald from the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia will develop a simple diagnostic test that can be used in the field to rapidly identify mosquitoes infected with pathogens such as the malaria parasite and dengue virus. Traditional methods require costly equipment and a laboratory setting. The test combines recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) with a lateral flow strip and can detect DNA from multiple pathogens in parallel, which will reduce costs. They will first perform a proof-of-concept study using laboratory-infected mosquitoes to evaluate the test and develop smart-phone software to translate the results. They will then perform field trials in Cairns to evaluate if their test can detect single infected mosquitoes placed in field traps containing uninfected insects.

Real-Time Data on Customer Experiences

Ernest MakotsiWayo Company LtdNairobi, Kenya
Grand Challenges Explorations
Financial Services Data
1 Nov 2015

Ernest Makotsi of Wayo Company Ltd. in Kenya will develop a mechanism for customers to provide immediate feedback on their retail experiences in Nairobi using mobile phones. Real-time feedback is thought to be more attractive for users and more valuable for providers, and having a mobile phone interface means feedback can be provided and analyzed from any location. They have developed the program, and will set up the technology in regional retail shops that provide digital financial services and advertise the event to promote customer participation. The data can be used by retailers to improve their customer services, and be sold to interested parties.

Acoustic Tracking of Mosquito Swarms for Vector Control

Szabolcs MarkaColumbia University - SPANew York, New York, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Malaria Transmission
1 Nov 2015

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. They have already demonstrated that they can acoustically detect a single distant mosquito in a noisy laboratory setting. They will further develop acoustic locator hardware and sensors targeting the common malaria mosquito Anopheles and field-test its performance in locating swarms from several tens of meters. By studying the acoustics of single mosquitoes as well as of swarms, it could be possible to track the behavior of individuals and to artificially induce swarm formation, to further support disease control efforts.

Regulation of Gut Health by Phage Infection

Corinne MauriceMcGill UniversityMontreal, Quebec, Canada
Grand Challenges Explorations
Bacteriophage
1 Nov 2015

Corinne Maurice of McGill University in Canada will use an ecological approach to determine whether bacteriophage (phage), which are viruses that infect bacteria, could be used to restore healthy microbial communities in the gut and thereby reduce stunting in children. They will collect stool samples from infants under two years old from Bangladesh, and compare the types of phage and bacteria found in stunted versus healthy children. Phage from healthy children will be used to infect bacteria from stunted children, and vice versa, to analyze how specific phage affect gut microbes under different conditions, which will demonstrate their potential for treating disease.

A Social Media Data-Driven Platform for Informed Data Collection

Grant McKenzieSpatial Development InternationalSeattle, Washington, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Financial Services Data
1 Nov 2015

Grant McKenzie of Spatial Development International in the U.S. will map the location of activities (touch points) related to financial services in developing countries by geosocial data mining, analysis and modeling to increase the efficiency and reduce the cost of data collection. They will first evaluate whether social media platforms such as Facebook, which include some geographic information, can be used to identify the location of actual touch point locations and from that develop a spatial regression model for estimating distribution in an unmapped, developing country. They will also develop a data collection platform that displays point of interest data for users to supplement with photographs and text, and add any unmapped touch points. In this way, unmapped regions can be easily identified for further exploration. They will evaluate the platform by surveying its performance in a test country.

Network Marketing Mobile Money Acceptance System on m-square

Enoma OdiaSofdia System NigeriaLekki, Nigeria
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mobile Money
1 Nov 2015

Enoma Odia of Sofdia System Nigeria in Nigeria will apply network marketing to promote the uptake of mobile money by offering financial rewards to merchants for recommending it to other merchants within their community. This marketing system leverages the communal style of living, where the residing merchants sell similar products and share the same language. When a recommendation to use mobile money comes from a merchant in the same community, and the rewards for referrals are shared between users, it is more likely to be accepted. They will use their m-square platform, evaluate the most effective compensation levels to promote uptake, and add an accounting system for users to monitor their income.

Insects Feeding Insects: A Hemolymph-Based Mosquito Diet

Johanna OhmCenter for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Pennsylvania State UniversityUniversity Park, Pennsylvania, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mosquito Control
1 Nov 2015

Johanna Ohm of Pennsylvania State University in the U.S. will produce an insect-based diet for breeding adult malaria-transmitting Aedes and Anopheles mosquitoes in the laboratory. Laboratory mosquitoes are most effectively bred for research using mammalian blood meals, which has numerous limitations including higher costs and requiring human volunteers with stringent regulations. It is known that some mosquitoes can produce viable eggs after feeding on soft-bodied insect larvae such as lepidopteran larvae. They will screen a selection of larvae to identify the most palatable insect-based diets, and evaluate them for effect on mosquito survival, fecundity and offspring viability compared to mosquitoes reared on blood-based diets.

Merchants on the Go!

Geraldine O'KeeffeSoftware Group Ke LtdNairobi, Kenya
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mobile Money
1 Nov 2015

Geraldine O’Keeffe of Software Group KE Ltd. in Kenya will develop a smartphone application so that smaller merchants in developing economies can use one system to receive mobile money from customers with different providers, and can digitally track sales and inventory. They will also explore options for subsidizing the technology including offering the generated data to financial service providers and others. Their approach will allow merchants to easily register online to encourage uptake, also reducing recruitment costs. They will customize their mobile application for the Kenyan market, integrate it with existing payment service providers, and perform a pilot study over 3-4 months with 25-50 merchants to evaluate functionality and usage for refining the platform.

Mobile Phone-Based Platform to Improve Financial Inclusion

Rohini PandeHarvard John F. Kennedy School of GovernmentChennai, , India
Grand Challenges Explorations
Financial Services Data
1 Nov 2015

Rohini Pande of Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government in the U.S. and colleagues Simone Schaner, Erica Field, Natalia Rigol, and Charity Troyer-Moore will use an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system to capture information on the financial access and practices of the rural poor in Madhya Pradesh, India. The system will also enable these people to interact with the formal financial system and receive government benefits. The rural poor in India lack a transparent, verifiable, and easily understood way to access information about account balances and the timing of direct deposit transfers due to poor literacy, and irregular service from bank operators. The IVR system will generate automated voice calls to individuals, providing personalized information on account activity and enabling them to give feedback on banking services through short surveys.

Data Collection Through Interactive Audio Podcasts

Neil PatelAwaazDe Infosystems Pvt LtdAhmedabad, , India
Grand Challenges Explorations
Financial Services Data
1 Nov 2015

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. The feedback will be used to monitor financial habits, and help identify barriers to usage and ways to improve services. The interactive podcast platform can also be supplemented with optional features such as balance inquiries or loan repayment reminders. AwaazDe (“give voice”) will tailor the technology, and work with partners to pilot test the podcasts and collect data first in 10 villages in India, followed by scaling up to 50,000 users.

Use Telecom Data to Identify Digitally Excluded and Women Communities

Frederic PivettaReal Impact AnalyticsLuxembourg, Luxembourg
Grand Challenges Explorations
Financial Services Data
1 Nov 2015

Frederic Pivetta of Real Impact Analytics in Luxembourg will develop a platform and applications to leverage data from telecom operators to identify individuals in developing countries, who are often women, without access to digital financial services. They hypothesize that these isolated individuals display unique cell phone behaviors that they can use to identify them. Once identified, they can be directly targeted with appropriate campaigns and products to encourage them to get beneficial financial services such as mobile money accounts. They will refine a predictive model to identify selected user features such as calling volume and social network characteristics from large datasets.

Ultrasound Strain and Time-of-Flight for Diagnosing Pneumonia

Jonathan RubinUniversity of MichiganAnn Arbor, Michigan, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Pneumonia
1 Nov 2015

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. Over two million children per year die from pneumonia, and many of these deaths are caused by coexisting malnutrition. They will design an ultrasound stethoscope device to automatically measure lung expansion and contraction during breathing to detect ventilation problems caused by pneumonia as well as the levels of subcutaneous fat on the chest wall to detect malnutrition. The device will be tailored for use by a minimally-trained health worker and the results reported on the display by a numeric readout. They will test the adapted ultrasound device in the laboratory, and gather population data to determine the normal distribution of fat thickness in the chest wall for estimating nutritional status.

Pay with a (Group) Selfie (PGS)

Ernesto DamianiKhalifa UniversityAbu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Grand Challenges Explorations
Financial Services Data
1 Nov 2015

Ernesto Damiani of Khalifa University in the United Arab Emirates will develop a software toolkit to enable the secure purchase of goods by taking a photo with a simple mobile phone. The procedure only requires both purchaser and merchant to carry a simple phone and to visually identify themselves and details of the purchase, for example with a card, that can be captured in a single photograph. They will build software that uses visual cryptography to divide the photograph into two parts or shares, one sent to each phone. When a network connection is encountered, the shares are transmitted to a third party who runs a point-of-service and reconstructs the image thereby validating the transaction before transferring payment. This method enables transactions between individuals in low network connectivity areas and by illiterate parties.

Creating the "M-KOPA" of Data Collection

Punit ShahOkHiNairobi, Kenya
Grand Challenges Explorations
Financial Services Data
1 Nov 2015

Punit Shah of OkHi in Kenya will build a platform to provide up-to-date information on financial access endpoints such as ATM locations by crowdsourcing data from smartphones from a network of users. Current tech-based data collection tools are not ideal as they are generally expensive, and the data quickly become outdated. They will build an app and run a 6-month pilot test by providing locked smart phones with limited functions to potential data collectors in Nairobi, one smaller city and one rural location. As data collectors complete set collection missions using their phones, more functions will be unlocked until the user becomes the owner of the phone, whereby subsequent missions are rewarded with free airtime. The data will be analyzed to determine the frequency of updates, and integrated with open data platforms to broadly disseminate the information and enhance its value.

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

Haiqing ShengUniversity of IdahoMoscow, Idaho, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Bacteriophage
1 Nov 2015

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. EPEC cause diarrhea and result in several hundred thousand infant deaths annually. They will engineer a CRISPR-Cas9 cassette to recognize and cleave a DNA sequence found specifically in EPEC, which will lead to selective EPEC cell death in the intestinal tract without affecting other beneficial bacteria. The engineered CRISPR-Cas9 will be administered using both safe EPEC-targeting viruses (bacteriophage) to treat primary infections as well as probiotic E.coli to stably establish the EPEC-targeting plasmid in the gut and block re-infection. They will test it using an established rabbit model of EPEC infection, which will pave the way for future clinical testing.

mLakshmi Mobile Credit and Payments

Harsh ShettyFirefish Networks Pvt. Ltd.Mumbai, , India
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mobile Money
1 Nov 2015

Harsh Shetty of Firefish Networks Pvt. Ltd. in India will provide a service – mLakshmi – for merchants using SMS to give credit to low-income customers and reduce their credit risk. Merchants and customers will register with the service and customers will receive regular SMS notifications of their credit balances, which they can use to pay for goods. They will promote uptake by rewarding merchants both for using the service and for recruiting customers, and the customers with good credit repayment histories will be eligible for more credit. They will develop the software platform and run pilot studies to refine the software and evaluate uptake.

Artificial Diet Complemented with a Human Blood Factor

Henrique SilveiraInstituto de Higiene e Medicina TropicalLisboa, Portugal
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mosquito Control
1 Nov 2015

Henrique Silveira of the Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical (IHMT) in Portugal and colleagues have identified a peptide in human blood that promotes female mosquito reproduction. They will test whether it can be added to artificial diets to improve mosquito breeding in the laboratory for studying vector-borne diseases like malaria. The human peptide activates a so-called G protein-coupled receptor in the mosquito, which somehow triggers reproduction. They will study the mechanism further, and use the most active form of the peptide to formulate an artificial meal and test its effect on different aspects of mosquito reproduction compared to a normal human blood meal.

Digital Currency System for Merchants and the Global Poor

Stan StalnakerHub Culture Services Ltd.London, United Kingdom
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mobile Money
1 Nov 2015

Stan Stalnaker of Hub Culture Services Ltd. in the United Kingdom will provide the global poor, merchants and partner NGOs with easy access to digital currency for making and receiving payments or distributing aid, with no transaction costs using mobile phones. The digital currency can be exchanged for a local currency for a fee using a Gateway Broker, who can be any merchant, NGO or bank. They will develop a new open-source set of APIs (application programming interface), and simple consumer and merchant interfaces using mostly icons so that people can easily register and transfer payments.

Increasing Use of Mobile Payments Among Kenya's Chemists

Jessica VernonMaisha MedsPalo Alto, California, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mobile Money
1 Nov 2015

Jessica Vernon and Jennifer Stutsman of Maisha Meds in Kenya will encourage chemists and pharmacies to accept mobile money in East Africa by integrating their tailored software application with an established mobile payment system, and providing automatic registration and financial incentives. Chemists have found it particularly difficult to track transactions made using mobile money and therefore tend to avoid using it. Their existing software program can be run on locally available tablets and enables digital recording of pharmacy's sales and purchases, and stock tracking. They will integrate this with a mobile payment system and offer it to a network of chemists who use mobile money to evaluate the effect on frequency of mobile money transactions. They will also test whether automatic registration to a mobile payment system along with access to competitive loans can sign-up more chemists than existing subscription packages.

New Attract and Kill Strategies for Malaria Control

Daniel SwaleLouisiana State University Agricultural CenterBaton Rouge, Louisiana, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Malaria Transmission
1 Nov 2015

Daniel Swale of Louisiana State University Agricultural Center in the U.S. will develop a trap to attract and kill pregnant Anopheles mosquitoes and their larvae, which transmit malaria. They will identify the best compound for attracting pregnant females based on either the known attractant Cedrol, a sugar-based attractant, or CO2. They will also test whether the larval development inhibitor triflumuron, alone or in combination with a potassium ion channel inhibitor, can be effectively transferred to the traps by mosquitoes from resting chambers, and destroy the residing larvae. The most promising combinations will be evaluated in a semi-field environment with the common malaria mosquito in southeast United States.

SMS Financial Survey Proof of Concept

Lynne ThomsonTNS Global ResearchBellevue, Washington, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Financial Services Data
1 Nov 2015

Lynne Thomson of TNS Global Research in the U.S. will use SMS to track digital and non-digital financial transactions in near real time to inform development agendas and boost uptake. Digital financial services help the poor lift themselves out of poverty, but measuring uptake is currently slow and expensive. SMS is widely used throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, and they will perform a proof-of-concept study in Kenya using SMS to send short surveys to a group of users to extract basic information on their recent financial transactions, such as type, date, and amount. They will develop a statistical approach to model the data and track behavior over time.

TAP (Tap and Pay)

Curtis VanderpuijeexpressPay Ghana LimitedAccra, Ghana
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mobile Money
1 Nov 2015

Curtis Vanderpuije, Kodjo Hesse and team from expressPay Ghana Ltd. in Ghana will develop a low-cost, contactless device for merchants in developing countries to more easily accept and process mobile money transactions. They will design the device so it can read identifying information from merchants and customers using radio-frequency identification, and use unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) to communicate with existing mobile money providers. Being contactless, it will speed up mobile money transactions, which currently take several minutes, and its simplicity will make it more accessible to customers. To encourage use, they will refund part of the cost of the device when a certain number of mobile money transactions are made per month.

Missiled Bacteriophage Enabling Controlled Infant Gut Health

Baojun WangThe University of EdinburghEdinburgh, United Kingdom
Grand Challenges Explorations
Bacteriophage
1 Nov 2015

Baojun Wang of the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom will engineer bacteriophages to selectively target gut pathogens such as Shigella and Salmonella that cause widespread environmental enteropathy in infants in developing countries. They will program the CRISPR-Cas9 (clustered, regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats–CRISPR-associated proteins) nucleases to cut the chromosomes of the target pathogens, and test their ability to block infection in a mouse gut colonization model while leaving the non-pathogenic and often beneficial bacteria largely intact.

RNA Phage-Mediated Microbiome Engineering

David WangWashington University in St. LouisSt. Louis, Missouri, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Bacteriophage
1 Nov 2015

David Wang of Washington University in St. Louis in the U.S. will evaluate specific RNA bacteriophage (viruses that infect bacteria) as therapeutics to modulate the bacterial communities in inflammatory conditions such as environmental enteropathy. To date, only DNA phage have been explored as therapeutics despite RNA phage being able to kill a broader range of bacteria. They will test the effect of two prototypical RNA phage on the gut microbe population in a mouse model of intestinal inflammation. They will also use stool samples from children with environmental enteropathy to identify novel resistance genes that block the bactericidal effect of the RNA phage, which will help gauge their value as potential therapeutics.

Artificial Mosquito Diet for New Vector Control Approaches

Dawn WessonTulane UniversityNew Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mosquito Control
1 Nov 2015

Dawn Wesson and Sam Jameson of Tulane University in the U.S. will develop an artificial meal for mosquitoes based on algae as a protein source that can be freeze dried and stored in blister packs, and refine their reusable feeding system. Mosquitoes are currently laboratory reared using expensive and difficult to obtain mammalian blood to ensure adequate numbers of offspring for studying. They proposed that a spirulina (Arthrospira platensis) would be an ideal candidate for feeding mosquitoes due to it being a complex protein source, easy to mass produce, and dark in color, which is a feeding cue for mosquitoes. They will supplement it with insect juvenile hormone, which stimulates egg production, sugar and salt, and test its palatability and effect on egg production in a number of different mosquito species using iterations of their meal delivery system compared to human blood.

New Unpowered Attract-Diagnose-Kill Surveillance Traps

Bradley WillenbergUniversity of Central Florida Research FoundationOrlando, Florida, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mosquito Control
1 Nov 2015

Bradley Willenberg at the University of Central Florida Research Foundation 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. They will develop a formulation based on toxic sugared water to attract specific types of mosquitoes to the trap. The sugar water will be mixed with a stable short nucleic acid sequence known as an aptamer, which they have designed to bind to the chikungunya virus, conjugated to gold nanoparticles. When a mosquito drinks the solution, its abdomen will turn blue if it is carrying this virus, and red if it isn’t, for an easy visual readout. They will test the performance of their device for attracting and killing the Aedes mosquito, and detecting the virus. Their approach could be used to detect other pathogens such as dengue virus and the malaria-causing Plasmodium parasite.

Enabling Merchant Acceptance of Mobile Money Payments in Nelamangala, India

Chrisitine YeeSmith CollegeNorthampton, Massachusetts, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mobile Money
1 Nov 2015

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. Fingerprint identification is relatively secure and will simplify the payment process so people with different levels of literacy can use it. They will test their prototype by giving deposits to a group of students and scanners to local merchants in Nelamangala, India, and providing the associated knowledge and resources needed to use their mobile money transfer system.

Next-Gen Monitoring of Infected Mosquitos in the Field

Paul YoungUniversity of QueenslandBrisbane, Queensland, Australia
Grand Challenges Explorations
Mosquito Control
1 Nov 2015

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. The goal is a simple to use, portable platform that can be used in the field. They will develop the assay using a range of infected mosquitoes to identify the optimal antibody and nanoparticle format for rapid and specific detection, and evaluate sensitivity.

A Low-Cost Ultrasound System for Detection of Malnutrition

Mirko ZimicUniversidad Peruana Cayetano HerediaLima, Peru
Grand Challenges Explorations
Pneumonia
1 Nov 2015

Mirko Zimic of Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Peru will develop a simple, low-cost lung ultrasound device that can automatically diagnose bacterial pneumonia and measure nutritional status in children in low-resource settings. They have developed an algorithm to detect lung infiltrates from digital ultrasound images as evidence of pneumonia in children, and have built a prototype device, which comprises an ultrasound probe connected to a laptop or smartphone for realtime analysis of the images. Visible and audio alerts are used to notify the technician of suspect regions. They will develop an additional algorithm to automatically measure anatomical parameters including rib diameter and skin thickness for predicting levels of malnutrition, and test it in a hospital in Peru. Ultimately, this will be incorporated into the ultrasound device so that both pneumonia and malnutrition can be easily diagnosed together by non-specialized health care workers.

Cow-Baited Tents as a Monitoring and Intervention Tool

Brandyce St. LaurentNational Institutes of HealthBethesda, Maryland, United States
Grand Challenges Explorations
Malaria Transmission
1 Nov 2015

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. Most Anopheles mosquitoes preferentially bite animals, but they still contribute to malaria transmission in humans, and many bite outdoors, rendering bednets and indoor repellants useless against them. They will produce low-cost tents treated with insecticide, and locally rent cows as bait. The tents will be set up in both villages and forests and the captured mosquitoes will be analyzed to evaluate the efficacy of their approach.

Measuring Change in the Decision-Making Role of Pastoral Women at the Household Level as a Result of their Financial and Social Empowerment

Kathleen ColsonThe BOMA Project, Inc.Manchester Center, Vermont, United States
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
28 Oct 2015

Kathleen Colson of The BOMA Project, Inc. in Kenya will investigate, measure and document how participation in BOMA’s Rural Entrepreneur Access Project (REAP)—a holistic two-year program of sequenced interventions—translates to such gender-influenced outcomes as increased household financial decision-making by women, increased education opportunities for girls and increased food security and use of healthcare by the household. REAP is a high-impact poverty graduation program that addresses the geographic and socio-economic context of the arid and semi-arid lands of Africa, where the harsh effects of climate change and endemic extreme poverty persistently undermine the well-being of women and children. The project provides ultra-poor Kenyan women cash grants, business skills training, mentoring and the opportunity to set up their own business to help lift their families out of poverty. Giving women more power over household spending tends to lead to improved family health care and education. They will recruit 750 women living in extreme poverty in pastoral communities to their two-year poverty graduation program. Upon these women exiting REAP, they will analyze its impact on improving the education and social standing of women and girls, and the physical and financial wellbeing of their families.

Improving Women's Access and Usage of Digital Financial Services

Flora MyambaResearch on Poverty Alleviation (REPOA)Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
28 Oct 2015

Flora Myamba of Repoa Ltd. in Tanzania will evaluate different methods for motivating women to use mobile financial services by performing a randomized control trial in Tanzania. Access to mobile money platforms in developing countries can help alleviate poverty, but many people, particularly women, do not own a mobile phone, and if they do, it is unclear whether they will use it for financial purposes. They will recruit 2,000 low-income women in Tanzania and provide them with different types of mobile phones and data packages to determine which combination leads to the biggest uptake of digital financial services, and analyze how it improves the welfare of women.

Healthy Birth: A Prospective Study to Evaluate the Implementation and Effects of an Intervention to Improve the Quality of Maternal and Neonatal Care in Brazilian Hospitals

Maria do Carmo LealFiocruzRio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Grand Challenges Brazil
All Children Thriving
20 Oct 2015

Maria do Carmo Leal from Fiocruz in Brazil will undertake a pilot “Parto Adequado” (Adequate Birth) project to evaluate whether different health care models offered by medical institutions during pregnancy and childbirth can promote healthier births, particularly by reducing the rate of unnecessary medical procedures. These include caesarean section without clinical indication, which occur frequently in Brazil and can have negative consequences. They have selected 23 geographically dispersed hospitals for the pilot study, which will involve around 16,000 mothers. To promote good practices, they have developed three health care models that combine different numbers and types of medical staff (i.e., Doctors and nurses-midwives) to be involved at specific stages from pregnancy to birth. These will be offered to hospitals for implementation over 18 months. They will then analyse the degree of implementation of the models, and their effects on the type of birth, adoption of good practices, and hospital costs after two and three years. They will also interview the mothers and health care workers to evaluate acceptability of the different models.

PrePARE - Preterm Birth Reduction by Improvements in the Quality of Care to Patients with Preeclampsia

Marcos Augusto Bastos DiasFiocruzRio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Grand Challenges Brazil
All Children Thriving
20 Oct 2015

Marcos Augusto Bastos Dias from Fiocruz in Brazil in collaboration with the Global Pregnancy Collaboration (CoLab) will test a new approach for managing women in Brazil with preeclampsia in order to reduce unnecessary preterm births. Preeclampsia is characterized by high blood pressure and impaired organ function during pregnancy and can cause severe complications or even death for mother and child. The only cure is delivery, but preterm births are also high risk. In Brazil preeclampsia accounts for far more preterm deliveries than in higher income countries who more readily choose medication to reduce the severity of the disease, and help delay delivery. The study includes seven geographically diverse hospitals with 23 satellite community health centres over four years. They will train staff to adopt the WHO guidelines for preventing preeclampsia and introduce a method for identifying low-risk women whose pregnancies can be safely prolonged. The study will also generate data and biological samples that can be used to help better stratify risk and understand the disease, which could further improve clinical management and lead to new treatments.

Monitoring Child Development Indicators in Vaccination Campaigns: A Tool for Planning and Evaluating Intersectoral Actions

Sonya Isoyama VenancioInstituto de SaúdeSão Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Grand Challenges Brazil
All Children Thriving
20 Oct 2015

Sonia Isoyama Venancio from the Instituto de Saúde in Brazil will implement a program for monitoring the development of children less than five years of age during vaccination campaigns in the municipalities, to help identify risk factors, raise awareness, and support healthy development. They will design and pilot test a questionnaire that can be easily applied during a vaccination procedure to carefully query the health and behavior of the child, as well as their family environment and access to health services and education. To promote implementation of the program, they will recruit and train interviewers, and partner with Universities to recruit health-care students for collecting the data and entering them into a custom built web application. They will validate their approach for identifying children with developmental problems, and analyze the data for potential causes such as socioeconomic conditions and quality of health care.

Maternal Neuropsychiatric Disorders During Pregnancy and Postpartum Period: Early Detection and Intervention, and its Impact on Family Triads

Ricardo Tavares PinheiroUniversidade Católica de PelotasPelotas, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Grand Challenges Brazil
All Children Thriving
20 Oct 2015

Ricardo Tavares Pinheiro from the Universidade Católica de Pelotas in Brazil will identify factors that are associated with gestational depression, and determine whether they influence their response to treatment and ultimately the healthy development of the child. Gestational and postpartum anxiety and depression affect 15-25% of mothers and can alter the emotional, social and cognitive development of the child. They are likely caused by a complex combination of genetic, hormonal, psychological and social/environmental factors. Only a handful of risk factors, including the levels of proinflammatory molecules, have been identified. The study will involve around 1250 pregnant women who will be evaluated by psychologists to ascertain their mental state. Blood and buccal cell samples will be collected to analyze the presence of candidate risk markers (specific proteins and microRNAs) and genetic polymorphisms (specific DNA sequences) to identify those associated with depression. They will also determine the relationship between these psychological and physiological factors and the subsequent motor and neurocognitive development of the born children. Clinical studies will also evaluate the efficacy of several modified therapeutic approaches centered on cognitive behavioral therapy, which involves guiding the patient to modify any distorted thinking and can be effective in depressed mothers.

Continuous Global Early Intervention Program for Preterm Infants Performed by their Families

Rita de Cássia SilveiraHospital de Clínicas de Porto AlegrePorto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Grand Challenges Brazil
All Children Thriving
20 Oct 2015

Rita de Cássia Silveira from Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre in Brazil will develop and test a program for families with preterm infants to follow at home to improve the child’s cognitive, motor and social development. Preterm infants (those born with less than 37 weeks of gestation) can suffer a variety of complications due to incomplete brain, lung and eye development, which can cause long-term problems. They have shown that careful baby massage, alongside the standard skin-to-skin care by the mother, in the hospital after birth can improve the child’s neurological development at two years of age. Here they will perform a randomized study of around 80 mothers of preterm infants, and teach one group to perform the massage technique and instruct them to administer it at home for the child’s first 12 months of life, which will be carefully monitored. The effects on motor and neurodevelopment will be assessed at regular intervals up to 24 months of age and compared to a control group performing only skin-to-skin care.

Infant Sleep Hygiene Counseling: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Iná da Silva dos SantosUniversidade Federal de PelotasPelotas, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Grand Challenges Brazil
All Children Thriving
20 Oct 2015

Iná da Silva dos Santos from the Universidade Federal de Pelotas in Brazil will develop a simple, low-cost strategy targeting mothers to ensure young children get enough sleep. Inadequate sleep is more common in children from low-resource households, and can negatively impact their physical and mental health, including their cognitive development. Children can be encouraged to sleep well by creating a restful environment and helping them learn to get to sleep by themselves. They will perform a randomized controlled study with around 500 mothers of infants aged three months. One group of mothers will be taught about normal sleep behavior during the first year of life and how to encourage their child to sleep. The effect of this intervention on sleep duration, growth and neurodevelopment will be analyzed over a 24-month period. Sleep duration will be monitored by actigraphy to ensure accuracy.

Evaluating the Impact of Social Factors and Interventions on Healthy Growth and Development: the 80 Million Brazilian Cohort

Mauricio Lima BarretoFiocruzRio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Grand Challenges Brazil
All Children Thriving
20 Oct 2015

Mauricio Lima Barreto from Fiocruz in Brazil will evaluate the impact of social and economic inequalities, and the national family allowance program (Bolsa Familia), on healthy births and early childhood health and development. They will setup a cohort, which will be derived from a central database of named households created to support Brazil’s social programs, and a data center for the analysis. They will use a variety of demographic, economic and social data on families, as well as information on births and childhood deaths, and child growth. The impact of receiving family allowance, and the effect of its value and duration, on outcomes such as birth weight, prematurity, fetal death, and early childhood growth will also be measured. This approach will generate evidence to help maximize the value of the social program and inform future related policies.

Testing PIXA(3): An Innovative Way to Measure Growth Easily, Frequently and Precisely

Guilherme Vanoni PolanczykUniversidade de São PauloSão Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Grand Challenges Brazil
All Children Thriving
20 Oct 2015

Guilherme Vanoni Polanczyk from Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil will test their new method Pixel Averages for Auxological Assessment (PIXA3) that enables parents at home to frequently and precisely measure height during early childhood to help better detect and monitor growth defects in low-resource settings. The current standard for accurately measuring height requires specialized equipment and trained staff, and is thus unsuitable for frequent application. Their new method involves using a smartphone to take multiple photographs of an individual next to an internal standard of known size, and doesn’t require cross-sectional population norms, which have complicated current methods of longitudinally assessing growth. They will perform a randomized controlled trial in São Paulo to test the feasibility of their method and determine how accurate it is compared to traditional growth measures taken at a health clinic.

Mother and Teacher Support Programs to Improve Cognitive, Social and Communication Skills of Pre-School Children, to Improve the Mother's Quality of Life and to Decrease Domestic Violence Levels

Maria Conceicao do RosárioUniversidade Federal de São PauloSão Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Grand Challenges Brazil
All Children Thriving
20 Oct 2015

Maria Conceicao do Rosário from Universidade Federal de São Paulo in Brazil will assess the effect of mother and teacher support programs in pre-schools in poor districts of São Paulo on the physical and emotional well-being of families, and on early childhood development. Many poor communities in Brazil suffer from high levels of urban violence and adult mental illness that affect the healthy development and well-being of children. Brazil has pledged that all children aged 4-6 will be in pre-school by 2016, presenting an opportunity to improve the quality of pre-school teaching to impact childhood development. They will recruit around 900 mothers to evaluate a mother support program, which will involve weekly group meetings for around 12 weeks to discuss issues including parenting methods and healthy child development. They will also implement a teacher support program to increase their knowledge on childhood health and development, and assess the impact on their attitudes and practices.

Validation Testing of Novel Multi-Use Intrauterine Device Inserter in Bangladesh

Shuchi KhuranaBioceptive, Inc.New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Grand Challenges for Development
Saving Lives at Birth
1 Oct 2015

Bioceptive aims to expand access to long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) for the estimated 222 million women around the world with an unmet need for modern family planning resources. The discreet intrauterine device (IUD) is one of the most applicable LARC methods for global use due to its long term of use, high efficacy, and minimal user effort. However, IUD access is frequently limited because the insertion procedure is complicated and only carried out by highly trained physicians. Bioceptive has developed a novel, reusable, sterilizable IUD inserter that makes the procedure simpler and intuitive and allows any healthcare worker to confidently insert an IUD with minimal training, thus using improved technology to overcome existing barriers to service delivery.

Microneedle Patch for Tetanus Toxoid Vaccination

Ioanna SkountzouEmory UniversityAtlanta, Georgia, United States
Grand Challenges for Development
Saving Lives at Birth
1 Oct 2015

Our goal is to engineer thermostable microneedle (MN) patches to deliver tetanus vaccine. Instead of expecting pregnant women from remote areas to travel far for vaccination, we propose to provide microneedle patches designed to be applied to skin like a skin plaster. Their small size, and lack of vaccine reconstitution, improves on standard practice. MNs are formulated to dissolve releasing the vaccine quickly, with no biohazard sharp waste.

Nanobiosym Pilot Validation Study of Gene-RADAR Nanotechnology Platform Point-of-Care for Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV in Rwanda

Anita GoelNanobiosym, IncCambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Grand Challenges for Development
Saving Lives at Birth
1 Oct 2015

In collaboration with the Rwandan Ministry of Health National Research Laboratory, and our on the ground implementing partners, Nanobiosym will reduce HIV related deaths in infants by scaling up access to its novel POC nanodiagnostic platform by validating Nanobiosym's proprietary Point-of-Care Gene-RADAR diagnostic platform's ability to measure HIV positive mothers' viral load thereby ensuring they are responding to ART and reducing their chances of transmitting HIV to their child in-utero, at birth, or during the breastfeeding period.

BiliSpec: Low-Cost, Point-of-Care Bilirubin Measurement Device to Diagnose Neonatal Jaundice and Monitor Phototherapy

Rebecca Richards-KortumRice UniversityHouston, Texas, United States
Grand Challenges for Development
Saving Lives at Birth
1 Oct 2015

Our idea is to develop BiliSpec, a bilirubin monitoring device with a per-test cost of less than $0.10. BiliSpec includes: (1) a lateral-flow device to separate serum from whole blood in under 30 seconds and (2) a battery powered reader to measure light transmission through the separated serum on the strip and display the bilirubin concentration. We estimate our device could prevent the deaths of approximately ninety-thousand neonates who die every year due to lack of access to effective treatment and monitoring for neonatal jaundice in low-resource settings.

Phase I Trial: Safety and Feasibility Study of the Odon Device for Assisted Vaginal Delivery

Mercedes BonetWorld Health OrganizationGeneva, Switzerland
Grand Challenges for Development
Saving Lives at Birth
1 Oct 2015

The objective of the study is to evaluate the safety and feasibility of the Odon device, a low cost, easy to use technological innovation, in assisting vaginal delivery in singleton term pregnancies during the second stage of labor. Interim evaluation of the device for safety and feasibility showed no major severe adverse events among women or infants enrolled in the study. The experience suggests that the device is easy to use and allows successful expulsion of the baby. The Odon device could play a major role in improving intrapartum obstetric care in the most vulnerable populations with the least access to well-trained specialists, extraction procedures or timely caesarean section.

Streamlining the Screening of Pregnant Women During ANC Through Development of the ANC Panel: A Single Point-of-Care, Sensitive, Low-Cost, Rapid, Paper-Based Microfluidic Diagnostic Test for Anemia, HIV, HBV, and Syphilis

Christina SwansonDiagnostics For AllCambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Grand Challenges for Development
Saving Lives at Birth
1 Oct 2015

Diagnostics For All will develop a sensitive, low-cost, rapid, paper-based microfluidic diagnostic test to screen pregnant women for anemia, HIV, HBV, and syphilis, from one drop of blood. This antenatal care (ANC) test panel will ensure that women who attend ANC at least once are tested for the most critical diseases and provided results on the spot. This ANC panel could improve maternal and child health outcomes for up to 31 million pregnant women in the developing world and their children.

Emergency Aerial Delivery of Blood and Life-Saving Medicines to Mothers in Rural Tanzania for Less Than $10: The Stork Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Delivery System

Zacharia MtemaIfakara Health InstituteIfakara, Tanzania
Grand Challenges for Development
Saving Lives at Birth
1 Oct 2015

Lack of fast, affordable delivery of blood profoundly restricts the number of lifesaving transfusions performed in the Dodoma region. We will use an autonomous Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) called Stork to transport screened and typed blood from a blood bank in Dodoma to peripheral health facilities, on-demand. In many cases, ground transport of blood would either be impossible or too costly using traditional means. Stork can already deliver over 1kg over 75km in less than 45 minutes at a cost of $10, outperforming all known alternatives.

Field Testing of Off-grid, Self-sustained, Modular, Electronic Toilet for Slums, with Solar Energy for Indian Weather and Integrated with Mixed Waste Processing Unit, with Water, Energy/Fertilizer Recovery

Midhu SVEram Scientific Solutions Pvt LtdTrivandrum, , India
Grand Challenges India
Reinvent the Toilet
25 May 2015

This project, undertaken in collaboration with the University of South Florida, U.S., aims to develop and demonstrate an innovative sanitation and resource recovery solution for the slum areas in India.

Augmented Infant Resuscitator (AIR)

Data SantorinoMbarara University of Science and TechnologyMbarara, Uganda
Grand Challenges for Development
Saving Lives at Birth
20 May 2015

Effective resuscitation could reduce intrapartum related neonatal deaths by 30%, and deaths from prematurity by 10%, creating the potential to save 347,200 babies annually. However, one in five trained healthcare professionals (HCPs) fail to perform the resuscitation technique correctly, and those that do, often experience a rapid decline in proficiency. Our Augmented Infant Resuscitator's advanced training capabilities, instant feedback mechanism, and objective self-audit and retraining abilities will maximize and sustain gains from effective resuscitation. The AIR prototype provides instant feedback to users about effective ventilation. This is measured using inexpensive instrumentation that calculates ventilation rate, air volume and air pressure delivered by the bag-valve-mask (BVM) across the resuscitation face-mask. These parameters correlate with the four most common mistakes that result in ineffective resuscitation: 1) Failed seal at the face-mask interface resulting in failure to inflate the lungs; 2) Blocked airways; and 3) Wrong ventilation frequency 4) Insufficient/shallow lung inflation. Each of these mistakes can cause death or brain damage. AIR also records performance on an internal memory card for future feedback, improving HCPs training by identifying persistent gaps in technique.

Proving Adoption of the Bempu Temperature-Monitoring Band to Prevent Neonatal Hypothermia in Low-Resource Settings

Ratul NarainBempu Health Private LimitedBangalore, Karnataka, India
Grand Challenges for Development
Saving Lives at Birth
20 May 2015

Regular temperature monitoring is an effective means of detection and prevention of hypothermia but in our extensive field research, we observed that newborn temperature monitoring is rarely practiced in under-resourced clinics and uneducated homes. After vetting the need with over 75 pediatricians and filtering through several proposed solutions, we are developing Bempu, a novel, simple low-cost newborn temperature monitoring wristband. The band intuitively alerts a mother in case of hypothermia, enabling her to take early action.

GMApp - The Developing Brain and the Developing World at Hand

Peter MarschikMedical University of GrazGraz, Austria
Grand Challenges Explorations
Brain Function/Gestational Age
1 May 2015

Peter Marschik from the Medical University of Graz in Austria will develop a mobile phone app to assess general movement in infants under 6 months of age for diagnosing neurological defects and predicting the development of abnormalities particularly in low-resource settings. General movement assessments (GMA) reflect the functioning of the developing brain and are normally made by video recording the whole body of an infant over 3-5 minutes followed by expert analysis. To expand access of this technique to developing countries, he will develop software for a smart phone to capture the general movements of an infant, and to relay the acquired data directly to a GM expert for immediate diagnosis and to plan any required treatment.

Skin to Skin: Sensing Age Through Light

Christopher YipUniversity of TorontoToronto, Ontario, Canada
Grand Challenges Explorations
Brain Function/Gestational Age
1 May 2015

Christopher Yip of the University of Toronto in Canada will test whether measuring skin thickness and cellular composition by non-invasive diffuse optical spectroscopy can be used to estimate the gestational age of newborns, which is important for maternal and child health. They will first determine how light absorption and scattering properties of skin tissue at differing depths correlate with skin structure and then apply their approach to neonates of defined ages. They will also develop relevant hardware and software strategies to translate the selected optical properties into gestational age, and plan to build a low-cost and portable spectroscopy device. In the future, this device could be configured to detect other disease-related biomarkers such as hydration levels.

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