Apostolos Alissandratos of the Australian National University in Australia will develop a biotechnology platform for the low-cost production of simple, just-add-water diagnostic tests for the early detection of infectious diseases in resource-limited settings. Diagnosis of infectious diseases generally involves detecting pathogen-specific nucleic acids in human samples, which requires unstable reagents, costly procedures, and skilled workers. They have engineered a safe bacterium that produces the biochemical reagents needed to detect the pathogenic nucleic acids as an extract. They will develop a method to freeze-dry this extract so that it is stable at room temperature, simplifying production and storage, and a protocol for incorporating it into a reaction mixture that only requires the addition of water to an individual tube for a diagnostic polymerase chain reaction. They aim to reduce the cost per test by at least 100-fold, and will evaluate their approach for detecting a malaria-causing pathogen.

Bernard Appiah of Texas A&M School of Public Health in the U.S. will produce a one-hour community radio program to be aired twice per week comprising a 10-minute radio drama serial on infant vaccines, a 10-minute panel discussion by community health workers, and a 30-minute phone-in by listeners, to improve on-time childhood vaccinations in Ethiopia. In 2016, on-time and full immunization coverage in Ethiopia was only achieved for 39% of children between one and two years of age, despite long-term efforts to improve it. One of the main reasons for this was lack of communication with mothers about immunizations. To address this, they will harness the popularity of community radio in Ethiopia. They will engage mothers, community health workers, and radio actors to help design a radio drama incorporating relevant topics on childhood immunizations, and train 20 health workers to be part of radio panel discussions. They will air the radio program for six months in two districts, and determine its impact on timely immunization coverage in a selected cohort of mothers with infants.

Menale Kassie of the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Kenya along with Ram Fishman and Opher Mendelsohn from Tel Aviv University in Israel will take a community-based crowdsourcing approach to crop protection of smallholder farms in low-resource settings by developing a simple software platform for basic feature phones to monitor pest incidence. Human-based monitoring of crops is the most accurate way to identify pests, but there are too few public monitoring agents in low-resource settings, leaving the majority of farms unprotected. Engaging the smallholder farmers to monitor their own crops is a promising solution, but most of them lack sophisticated equipment like smart phones and have low technical knowledge, so simpler solutions are needed. Therefore, they will adapt commercially-available software that collates and analyzes pest incidence data for basic feature phones and, together with smallholder farmers, design simple interfaces for SMS communication. They will test their approach by performing a pilot study to monitor wheat and maize, covering one to two counties in Kenya, and teach smallholder farmers and government agents how to use the monitoring system and compare the data with that collected by expert field agents.

Saurabh Agarwal of Deeper Learning Innovations Private Limited in India will build an interactive, digital teaching platform using advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence algorithms to enable teachers across the globe to more effectively teach life skills to every child. Teaching standards in developing countries suffer from limited access to quality content, restricted teaching methods for teachers, and a lack of ways to transfer knowledge and skills to other teachers and parents. Life skills such as problem solving and communication that are needed to address 21^st century challenges such as health, wellness, and gender equality are far better learned by experience and reflection, rather than reading and lectures. They will build the platform and incorporate life skills modules designed by learning experts and teachers containing multi-lingual and contextualized content for global access, a teacher's discussion forum, and a module designed by teachers to help parents support their child's education. The goal is to make the platform freely available and accessible to all teachers across the globe.