Grant Opportunities from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is inviting applications that address specific challenges defined in the grant programs below. For details and application instructions, please visit the new Grand Challenges website. Please note that descriptions of the challenges are available on the website in Chinese, French, Portuguese and Spanish.

1) Grand Challenges Explorations is seeking innovative global health and development solutions and is now accepting proposals for its latest application round. Applicants can be at any experience level; in any discipline; and from any organization, including colleges and universities, government laboratories, research institutions, non-profit organizations, and for-profit companies. Initial grants will be US $100,000 each, and projects showing promise will have the opportunity to receive additional funding of up to US $1 million.

Proposals are being accepted online until ​11 ​November, 2015 for the following challenges: 

• Novel Approaches to Characterizing and Tracking the Global Burden of Antimicrobial Resistance
• Explore New Solutions in Global Health Priority Areas
• Addressing Newborn and Infant Gut Health Through Bacteriophage-Mediated Microbiome Engineering
• Explore New Ways to Measure Delivery and Use of Digital Financial Services Data

2) New Interventions for Global Health: Vaccine Manufacturing. This challenge focuses on innovations in vaccine manufacturing platforms designed to lower production cost for vaccines that target diseases of great global burden and that are among the most costly to produce with current technologies.

Letters of Intent will be accepted until ​5 ​November, 2015. Read more about this grant opportunity here.

3) The Global Innovation Fund is accepting application on a rolling basis.  Please visit the website for more information http://globalinnovation.fund/apply-to-gif

4) An Interactive Biostatistics Course will be held from 16-20 November 2015 at the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for TB and HIV (K-RITH), based at the Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine in Durban, South Africa. The primary goal of this course is to give participants an overview of the various biostatistical methods used in medical research so that they can both employ these techniques in their own research and better understand the results presented in medical literature. Lori Chibnik, PhD, MPH, a Biostatistician at Harvard University, will run an inspiring and hands-on training course on biostatistics where students will work with data from their own projects to understand basic statistical concepts and methods used in medical research. Travel Scholarships are available to allow trainees for across Africa to attend. For more information and to apply please visit www.k-rith.org. Deadline for applications:  1 October 2015.

5) In addition, the African Academy of Sciences and the New Partnership for African Development have launched Grand Challenges Africa in Nairobi, Kenya. This program joins others within the Grand Challenges family of grant programs supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its partners. Grand Challenges Africa will build on the global success of Grand Challenges programs in India, Brazil, and South Africa, as well as the strong base of Africa Grand Challenges grantees already funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, and USAID. Please read our latest blogs including one from the Global Health President. For more information please visit AAS.

Furthermore, as a forum for sharing ideas, pursuing new opportunities and keeping abreast of new developments in the field of global health, The Gates Foundation together with Grand Challenges Canada has set-up a LinkedIn group. All you need to join is a free LinkedIn account - go to Global Health Innovations and click "Join"