Deadline: 11 May 2016
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has launched a call for ideas for its 17th round of Global Grand Challenges Exploration with an aim to harness advances in science and technology to save lives, and all of the investments are driven by the need to develop and apply solutions that can be deployed, accepted, and sustained in the developing world.
Applications are invited to encourage innovators around the world to think outside the box and potentially address challenges outside their primary field of work. Applicants must review the priority funding areas for additional information and consider ideas that can be sufficiently tested within the scope of a GCE Phase I award ($100,000 USD over 18 months).
Focus Areas
- The foundation is seeking innovative ideas to assess the burden of disease and to develop new diagnostics, especially to:
- Develop methods for simple preparation and preservation of stool samples for room-temperature transport and remote-analysis;
- Better understand cause of death from tissue samples;
- Develop point-of-care nucleic acid diagnostics to below $2 per test;
- Enable self-testing for cervical cancer;
- Develop malaria diagnostics to accelerate toward eradication.
Funding Priorities
- Develop methods for simple preparation and preservation of stool samples for room-temperature transport and remote-analysis
- Better understand cause of death from tissue samples
- Develop Point-of-care nucleic acid diagnostics to below $2 per test
- Enable self-testing for cervical cancer
- Develop malaria diagnostics to accelerate toward eradication
Proposal Selection Criteria
Successful proposals will:
- Clearly describe how the idea, if successful, would help solve one of the challenges described in the call;
- Be directly relevant to the developing world (e.g. low-cost, useful across multiple geographical and cultural settings, self-sustaining);
- Have a clear and testable hypothesis and include an associated plan for how the idea would be tested or validated;
- Yield interpretable and unambiguous data in Phase I, in order to be considered for Phase II funding.
How to Apply
Interested applicants can apply by downloading the application form via given website.
For more information, please visit Global Grand Challenges.