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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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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 Current tech-based data collection tools are not ideal as they are generally expensive, and the data quickly become outdated.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.

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.

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.

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