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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.