Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - Grand Challenges Grant Opportunities

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its funding partners in the Grand Challenges family of grant programs are inviting innovators to apply for three grant opportunities:

1) Our Grand Challenges Explorations  fosters early-stage discovery research to expand the pipeline of ideas for solving our greatest global health and development challenges. Launched in 2008 with an initial $100 million commitment from the foundation, Grand Challenges Explorations grants have already been awarded to more than 1100 researchers from more than 60 countries.

We are accepting applications on the following six topics until May 11, 2016:

· 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

2) Grand Challenges China: New Interventions for Global Health.  This challenge focuses on calls for innovative concepts for safe, effective, affordable and widely utilized 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.
Application deadline is March 15, 2016, 8:00 am Beijing time (March 14, 2016, 5pm Seattle time). For a detailed description of this challenge, please visit the Grand Challenges site.

3) Grand Challenges for Development: Saving Lives at Birth.  USAID, the Government of Norway, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, the U.K.'s Department for International Development (DFID), and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) have joined together to launch Saving Lives at Birth.  The goal of this program is to find the tools and approaches to help mothers and newborns during their most vulnerable hours.

Application deadline is February 29, 2016.

Further information is available at http://www.gatesfoundation.org and at the blog on the first generation of Grand Challenges grants.