Gates to fund novel projects with $100M

World's largest private philanthropy is handing out $100,000,000 fund to 104 research projects that explore novel ways to solve some of the world's most pressing medical problems. The grants mark the first round of funding from Grand Challenges Explorations, which will dole out $100 million over the next five years to fund groundbreaking research. The initial 104 projects were chosen from over 4,000 grant applications.

The idea, the Gates Foundation said, was to find projects that "fall outside current scientific paradigms and could lead to significant advances if successful." For example, one program will attempt to make a "mosquito flashlight" to prevent malaria transmission; another will test whether mosquitos can be used to vaccinate people. After a year the foundation will review the winner's progress; if the project still shows promise, the grantees can apply for an additional $1 million in funding.

"We were hoping this program would level the playing field so anyone with a transformational idea could more quickly assess its potential for the benefit of global health," said Dr. Tachi Yamada, president of global health at the Gates Foundation, who announced the grants at the fourth annual meeting of the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative in Bangkok. "The quality of the applications exceeded all of our expectations. It was so hard for reviewers to champion just one great idea that we selected almost twice as many projects for funding as we had initially planned."

- see the Gates Foundation release [1]
- here's the WSJ article [2]

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