Deadline: 29-Feb-24
Applications are open for the Trinity Challenge on Antimicrobial Resistance to promote innovation in finding new data sources and integration of data, steering clear of incomplete and siloed information.
The Trinity Challenge (TTC) is a charity supporting the creation of data-driven solutions to help protect against global health threats.
The Trinity Challenge encourages novel analytics and technology to derive evidence-based knowledge, and drive more effective policy and action.
Antimicrobial resistance, which for the purposes of this Challenge relates specifically to antibiotic resistance in bacteria, is a global security threat, impacting human, animal, and environmental health (often referred to as One Health). Losing effective antibiotics to prevent or treat bacterial infections increases mortality from previously treatable, common infections such as pneumonia, urine infections and meningitis, and increases the risk of everyday medical interventions such as surgery and cancer care. The food security requires healthy animals and is also adversely impacted by environmental contamination, with antibiotics from the pharmaceutical industry and unsafe water and sanitation systems causing increased levels of antimicrobial resistance in environmental bacteria which enter the food chain. While much of the world’s attention is on the next pandemic akin to COVID-19, human health and wellbeing is inescapably linked to antimicrobial resistance. For this reason, The Trinity Challenge has chosen it as the focus of the Challenge.
Objectives
- The Trinity Challenge on Antimicrobial Resistance seeks solutions which fall into one or more of the following Challenge Objectives:
- Innovation to identify new sources of data, collection, and analysis
- Integration of existing and novel data sets with citizen-related data (CRD)
- Implementation of more effective policy and action on antimicrobial resistance by using these tools
Solutions might respond to this One Health crisis by, for example:
- Developing new forms of community surveillance for antimicrobial resistance
- Delivering sustainable access to effective antimicrobials
- Developing (or updating) more accurate estimates of bacterial disease and antimicrobial resistance burden
- Creating greater understanding of community transmission and drivers of antimicrobial resistance in humans, animals, and food production systems
- Informing and influencing antimicrobial resistance One Health policy decision making
- Countering the dissemination of substandard and falsified antimicrobials for bacterial infection
- Improving farm biosafety and environmental security
Funding Information
- Across the Challenge Objectives (Innovation, Integration, Implementation), they seek to identify a transformative solution to win a grand prize award of up to £1 million.
Eligibility Criteria
- MIT Solve is open to anyone in the world, regardless of age, nationality, gender identity, cultural identity, or political viewpoint. US law prevents MIT Solve from accepting applications from people who are ordinarily resident in Iran, Cuba, Syria, North Korea, or the Crimea, Donetsk People’s Republic, or Luhansk People’s Republic areas of Ukraine. Applications from people in Venezuela, Belarus, China (including Hong Kong), Saudi Arabia, and Russia will undergo legal review and may be removed from the website if US law prevents MIT Solve from accepting them.
- The Trinity Challenge welcomes submissions in English, from anyone, anywhere in the world, including previous applicants. Applicants from LMICs are especially welcome. In addition to offering prize funding, the Trinity Challenge will aim to support winning solutions by enabling collaborations with its Challenge network of members.
- Within their submission, applicants must outline how their solution provides a public benefit that would be globally accessible under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.
- The Trinity Challenge on Antimicrobial Resistance is focused exclusively on finding solutions in LMICs.
- While submissions are welcomed from organizations based in high-income countries (HICs), in keeping with the focus of this Challenge and the vision of The Trinity Challenge, applicants from HICs must demonstrate bona fide partnerships with LMIC researchers or organizations as part of the challenge team. This must also be reflected in the flow of funds in the budget proposal and justification. Furthermore, data must be relevant to, or collected from, LMICs, and not HICs.
- Prize funding is available to any of the following entities:
- Teams or institutions, provided that they will create or appoint a legally registered organization in the home jurisdiction with a bank account to receive prize funding
- Organizations, in any form, that are legally registered in their home jurisdiction with a bank account registered to that organization
- A consortium of the above, provided that a lead organization and lead individual is identified
- The Trinity Challenge may require that a prize winner appoints a fiscal sponsor to receive and administer any award funds on their behalf
Ineligible
- Prize funding will not be awarded to any of the following:
- Individuals or those under 18 years of age
- Applicants that focus on interventions in HICs
- Any donor that has made a financial contribution to The Trinity Challenge prize fund
- Any applicant that fails the Trinity Challenge due diligence checks
- Any applicant that does not agree to the Trinity Challenge Award Agreement
- A submission from an organization operating in a sanctioned country
- For-profit companies that fulfill (or are controlled by a for-profit group that fulfills) any two of the following conditions:
- Annual revenue/turnover in excess of £50 million per year
- Balance sheet net assets in excess of £20 million
- Average monthly FTE employees in excess of 250
For more information, visit Massachusetts Institute of Technology.