Bill Gates: Great Ideas from Unexpected Places
02/15/2011
Gates blogs on bold research ideas that have the potential to create breakthroughs in global health solutions
I have always been interested in the scientific discoveries underlying health advances in developing countries. The benefits of such breakthroughs are substantial, with the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives. And the challenges are great, often involving issues that no one has been able to solve before.
Grand Challenges Explorations - part of the Foundation's Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative - funds bold research ideas that have the potential to create breakthroughs in global health solutions.
Launched two years ago, Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE), is aimed at encouraging researchers with promising and sometimes unconventional ideas for improving health to apply for $100,000 grants. That may not seem like a lot of money for scientific research. But by funding a larger number of smaller grants and encouraging applications from a wider range of individuals - including those with little or no experience - Grand Challenges Explorations can fund initial research into potentially innovative concepts that might not otherwise ever be explored.
In October of last year, nine previous grant recipients were awarded next-stage grants of up to $1 million. This funding will allow projects that have shown outstanding progress and great promise to move forward.
For example, Dr. Mark Davis, professor and director of the Stanford Institute for Immunology, Transplantation and Infection, is working on a new technique to measure vaccine efficacy, a tool that could shorten the time required to test new vaccine candidates. Dr. Pradip Rathod, a professor of chemistry at the University of Washington, is trying to develop a mechanism that could help prevent drug resistance from developing during malaria treatment. Dr. Dan Feldheim, professor at the University of Colorado is exploring how gold crystals could be tailored to block many viral and bacterial drug resistance mechanisms. And Dr. Szabolcs Marka, an experimental astrophysicist at Columbia University who specializes in gravitational waves, is applying his expertise to malaria prevention. He's working on a device that will use light fields to create barriers to deter mosquitoes from humans and prevent malaria transmission.
I had a chance to meet these researchers and other GCE grantees and I found their passion and creativity inspiring. Some, perhaps many, of these ideas may not pan out. But if even one of these projects is successful, it will have been well worth the investment.
Learn More
Read the other blogs in the Grand Challenges in Global Health Series
Chris Wilson, Global Health Discovery Program, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Engaging the Best Minds to Tackle Global Health Challenges
Keith Jerome, University of Washington, Slicing HIV DNA from Infected Human Cells
Dan Feldheim, University of Colorado, Boulder, The Golden Treatment: Staying One Step Ahead of Drug Resistance
Dr. Szabolcs Márka, Columbia University, From Black Holes to Malaria
Bill Gates is co-chair and trustee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
you to good
— rekha on 2011-02-20