Damien Fair of Oregon Health & Science University in the U.S. will determine whether combinations of prenatal and early postnatal stress markers can be used to predict the developmental trajectories of specific cognitive processes known as executive functions, which underlie goal-directed behavior and are important for many social and academic skills. They will use their maternal-infant macaque model to identify stress markers such as maternal nutrition, heart rate, and cortisol levels that correlate with the later development of specific behaviors in offspring, and with brain connectivity at different developmental stages as measured by magnetic resonance imaging. The identified brain imaging and stress markers will also be analyzed using their dataset derived from maternal-infant humans.

Patrick De Boever of VITO in Belgium will study the effects of stress on neurodevelopment in children by building a database of biological markers of the stress response detected in saliva. They will generate comprehensive genetic and epigenetic profiles, such as DNA methylation patterns, of salivary samples taken after laboratory-controlled or environmental stress events from over 1000 children of a range of ages and backgrounds. The aim is to capture developmental changes in stress reactivity over time and use the profiles to predict the course of neurological development.

Nana Coleman of World Vision in the U.S. will teach positive parenting skills such as hugging, reading, and playing to parents in Armenia to promote healthy childhood development. They will exploit their existing network of health care providers and parent support groups to teach better parenting behavior, and integrate it with another program they have been running to improve child and maternal health. They will test whether this holistic strategy is more effective at changing parental behavior and improving childhood nutrition and development than the individual approaches.

James Ransom of IFETP in the U.S. will promote detection and treatment of five neglected tropical diseases in South Sudan by exploiting and further developing an existing health infrastructure that has successfully reduced the incidence of guinea worm disease. They will target two regions with particularly high incidences of the targeted diseases, and train the local health surveillance officers on preventative methods and to provide comprehensive care and treatment. They will also work to educate the public and media about these diseases.

Sean Deoni of Brown University in the U.S. will evaluate whether mapping myelination in the infant brain can predict their subsequent levels of cognitive ability such as language and motor functioning, which emerge later in childhood. Myelin is a lipid that is deposited around neuronal axons during development. Twenty-four infants between four and six months old will be recruited to a controlled pilot study. At six and 12 months the children will be evaluated for brain myelin content, using magnetic resonance imaging and neurocognitive functions, to link specific myelination levels with cognitive ability. In the future, this approach could also be used to measure the impact of the environment, such as diet, on brain development.

Laura Jelliffe-Pawlowski of the University of California, San Francisco in the U.S. is developing an algorithm to measure gestational age from metabolic markers taken during routine newborn screening. Measuring accurate gestational age is important for assessing infant health such as brain development, but it is challenging in developing countries without specialized equipment and expertise. In Phase I, they developed a statistical model using data on 51 metabolic markers from around 730,000 newborns in the U.S. that predicted gestational age at birth within around an average of one week margin of error. In Phase II, they will further adapt and test their algorithm for use in Malawi and Uganda by using existing data from 500 pregnancies in Malawi and 1000 in Uganda, and also determine its value for identifying newborns at risk of neonatal death or complications.

Shannon Ross-Sheehy of East Tennessee State University in the U.S. will study whether simply monitoring eye movements in infants can be used to measure their neural development. During the first year of life, infant's brains are highly plastic and thus potentially more amenable to the correction of any developmental defects. However, these defects are often only detected in childhood, which may be too late. They will study the changes in eye movement patterns in infants over time at ages four, seven and ten months, and in parallel measure cognitive development to identify links between the two. This method would be relatively inexpensive and quick to perform, and therefore be suitable for use also in developing countries.

Linda Saif from Ohio State University in the U.S. will develop a pig model to recapitulate the vicious cycle of malnutrition and repeated enteric infections seen in young children in developing countries in order to study the underlying biology and identify effective treatments. Childhood malnutrition is rife in impoverished regions, and causes substantial mortality and disabilities. It impairs gut function and immunity, and leads to increased enteric infection rates. They will explore the relationship between malnutrition and enteric infections using piglet models of malnutrition and multiple pathogen-associated enteropathy, and analyze the effects on the cellular and microbial composition of the gut, and the immune response. They will also test whether specific diets and supplements such as tryptophan can restore healthy gut function.

Lesley Drake of Imperial College London in the United Kingdom will develop a mobile phone-based platform to increase the participation of smallholder farmers in the Kenyan government's homegrown school meals program. The technology will enable schools to report their food requirements, and the Ministry to advertise tenders to registered sellers including smallholder farmers, all via mobile phone. This approach will lower the cost of making school feeding contracts and make the process transparent, as well as providing a new market for local farmers. They will develop and pilot test the platform with 48 schools in two counties in Kenya.

This project, run in collaboration with international partners Daisa Enterprises (formerly Wholesome Wave) and the McGill University Centre for the Convergence of Health and Economics, aims to pilot an innovative entrepreneurial approach to provide economic benefits and increase agricultural production, nutritional intake, and overall health to women in resource-poor rural and urban communities.

Mwelecele Malecela of the National Institute for Medical Research in the United Republic of Tanzania will integrate the treatment of neglected tropical diseases with water, hygiene and sanitation programs to lower costs and maximize the use of resources. They will extend and develop local health infrastructures by generating income for community health workers, and involve people at all community levels in the project. In this way, they aim to provide a unified platform for managing and executing diverse projects related to the treatment of diseases to increase their long-term success.

John Spencer of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom along with Sean Deoni of the University of Colorado in the U.S. are assessing the trajectory of brain development during the first two years of age using a range of imaging, physiological and behavioral assessment tools to understand how development is affected by environmental factors such as nutrition, stress, and parent-child interaction. In their Phase I project, Spencer and colleagues (while at the University of Iowa in the U.S.) used a neuroimaging technology – functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) – to localize brain activity during a preferential looking task as a representation of visual working memory in children between four months and four years of age. They used this data to create a developmental trajectory for this visual working memory task and the underlying functional brain network. Sean Deoni and colleagues in their Phase I project (while at Brown University in the U.S.) used MRI to characterize developmental trajectories of myelination in healthy infants and young children to understand the relationship between myelination and cognitive ability. In Phase II, these two research groups will partner together along with an organization in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India, and use the same methods to assess functional brain development over the first two years of age in two cohorts from different socioeconomic-educational settings starting at six and nine months of age. They will also analyze the effects of various factors such as sleep and nutrition on brain development. In addition, they will develop and test a new tablet-based application for larger-scale studies by untrained assessors in the field, and identify tailored approaches for parents to help them promote healthy cognitive development in their children.