Quantitative BioSciences Receives $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations Grant for Ground-Breaking Research in Global Health and Development
San Diego, CA – Quantitative BioSciences announced today that it is a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Quantitative BioScienceswill pursue an innovative global health and development research project, titled “Algae for the Effective and Economical Treatment of Waste.”
Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) funds scientists and researchers worldwide to explore ideas that can break the mold in how we solve persistent global health and development challenges. Quantitative BioSciences’s project is one of over 85 Grand Challenges Explorations Round 6 grants announced today by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“GCE winners are expanding the pipeline of ideas for serious global health and development challenges where creative thinking is most urgently needed. These grants are meant to spur on new discoveries that could ultimately save millions of lives,” said Chris Wilson, director of Global Health Discovery at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
To receive funding, Quantitative BioSciences and other Grand Challenges Explorations Round 6 winners demonstrated in a two-page online application a bold idea in one of five critical global heath and development topic areas: polio eradication, HIV, sanitation and family health technologies, and mobile health.
Quantitative BioSciences in San Diego is developing an algae-based waste treatment system targeted for third-world applications. Cyanobacteria will treat a community’s waste and produce two forms of renewable energy: nutrient-rich fertilizer to enhance agriculture and biomethane to power the facility and neighboring community.
Grand Challenges Explorations is a US$100 million initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Launched in 2008, Grand Challenge Explorations grants have already been awarded to nearly 500 researchers from over 40 countries. The grant program is open to anyone from any discipline and from any organization. The initiative uses an agile, accelerated grant-making process with short two-page online applications and no preliminary data required. Initial grants of $100,000 are awarded two times a year. Successful projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to $1 million.