Three Grand Challenges grant opportunities

The funding partners of the Grand Challenges family of grant programs, led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are inviting innovators to apply for three upcoming opportunities.

Grand Challenges Explorations fosters early-stage discovery research to expand the pipeline of ideas for solving our greatest global health and development challenges. Applications to the grant program are being accepted on the following six topics until 11 May:

• Assess Family Planning Needs, Preferences and Behaviors to Inform Innovations in Contraceptive Technologies and Services
• Develop Novel Platforms to Accelerate Contraceptive Drug Discovery
• Design New Analytics Approaches for Malaria Elimination
• Accelerate Development of New Therapies for Childhood Cryptosporidium Infection
• Novel Approaches to Characterizing and Tracking the Global Burden of Antimicrobial Resistance
• Explore New Solutions in Global Health Priority Areas

Grand Challenges China: New Interventions for Global Health is a new challenge which focuses on innovative concepts for safe, effective, affordable and widely utilised interventions, such as vaccines and therapeutics, with the potential to protect against the acquisition, progression or transmission of infectious diseases that disproportionately affect the world’s poorest. This call is in partnership with the National Natural Science Foundation of China, with an application deadline of 15 March at 8 am Beijing time.

Lastly, Grand Challenges for Development: Saving Lives at Birth aims to find the tools and approaches to help mothers and newborns during their most vulnerable hours, especially those in poor, hard-to-reach communities. The challenge seeks innovative ideas that can leapfrog conventional approaches in three main domains: technology; service delivery; and ‘demand side’ innovation that empowers pregnant women and their families to practise healthy behaviours and have access to health care. It has an application deadline of 29 February.