Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) Grand Challenges: New Grant Opportunities

BMGF has announced new grant opportunities for their Grand Challenges Programme. Details about the most relevant one for FTM researchers can be found below, and you can go to their homepage for a list of all open opportunities.

New Interventions for Global Health:

This opportunity focuses on innovative concepts for vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics with the potential to be translated into safe, effective, affordable, and widely utilized interventions to protect against the acquisition, progression, or transmission of infectious diseases, or to provide a cure for infectious diseases, in resource‐limited settings.

This request for proposals will fund full awards that could include grants, program related investments, or contracts up to USD $10,000,000 per awardee for up to four years. Full awards must include an industry, biotech, or other translational partner, either leading or participating in the application. We will also consider applications for pilot awards of up to USD $2,000,000 and up to four years to explore concepts that require additional investigation, with the anticipation that successful applicants will apply for a full award in subsequent years. Pilot awards do not include a requirement for a biotech or translation partner, but such partnerships would still be welcome.

Key Dates:

Open for submission: November 4, 2014

Application deadline:  January 13, 2015

To read the full call for applications, click here.

If you have any questions, or think that you might be interested in applying to this grant, please contact Paul, Tim, or Glad at the Office of Research Services. We are happy to help you to get started, and answer any questions you may have.

AXA Research fund - Young Research Fellowships (Post Doc)

AXA Research fund has announced that their Young Research Fellowships (Post Docs) opens this October.

AXA is an insurance company, and this funding aims to fund basic research dedicated to better understand important hazards, risks and threats within three areas - socioeconomic risks, environmental risks, and life risks.

Life risks includes (but is not limited to):

• Aging/long term care, trends in individual longevity, age-related diseases, demographics
• Bio medical risks, evolution of infectious diseases and pandemics, exposure to new technologies
• Addictions and risky behaviors, psychology, biology, medicine

Eligibility: Young Research Fellowships are open PhD graduates that have obtained their degree within the last 5 years.

• Maximum project length: 2 years
• Funding limit: 120,000EUR total

Application Procedure:

1. Application for this program must be done by the institution, who nominates up to 4 researchers. The deadline for this nomination step is November 8, 2014. 
2. Once the institution has put forward the nominees, the applicant must submit an application form online - CV and extended synopsis of the proposal. The deadline for this step is December 15, 2014.
3. Successful applicants are then contacted, and asked to submit a full proposal. Deadline: March 19, 2015

For full details about this opportunity, please go to AXA Research Fund homepage. If you are interested in applying, and would like FTM to nominate you and your project, please contact Tim or Glad at the Office of Research Services and we are more than happy to help.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: GRAND CHALLENGES EXPLORATIONS

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has just released a call for applications for the 14th round of Grand Challenges Explorations grants. Grand Challenges Explorations seeks innovative global health and development solutions. Applicants can be at any experience level; in any discipline; and from any organization.

Two-page proposals can be submitted online until November 12, 2014.

Initial grants are on USD 100,000, and projects showing promise can receive additional funding up to USD 1 million.

The applications should be on one of the following six topics:

-    Surveillance Tools, Diagnostics and an Artificial Diet to Support New Approaches to Vector Control.
-    New Approaches for Addressing Outdoor/Residual Malaria Transmission
-    New Ways to Reduce Pneumonia Fatalities through Timely, Effective Treatment of Children
-    Enable Universal Acceptance of Mobile Money Payments to Create an Economic Ecosystem that Will Help Lift the Poorest Out of Poverty
-    Explore New Ways to Measure Brain Development and Gestational Age
-    New Ways of Working Together: Integrating Community-Based Interventions

Click the links on each topic for further details, or click here for more info and application instructions.

If you are interested in applying, or have any questions, please get in touch with Paul, Tim, or Glad at the Office of Research Services and we will be happy to help.

NIH-NSF Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases Program: A Joint Program for Multidisciplinary Research

The Fogarty International Center, in association with other institutes, have identified ecological and evolutionary sciences as essential to understanding many infectious diseases.

This program is designed to support mutli-disciplinary teams from low or middle income countries discover the principles governing the transmission of infectious diseases between humans and their hosts. The goal is to better understand and predict transmission of diseases.

Proposed projects should include aspects from various disciplines such as data modeling, bioinformatics, genomics, sociology, and economics; in addition to the relevant scientific fields regarding pathogen, vector and host species.

The award funding is still subject to availability, but will be up to 2.5 million dollars overall for direct and indirect costs over 5 years. Components of the NIH will be able to award up to 350,000 dollars for direct costs per annum, lasting up to 5 years.

For more information, see the NIH announcement, or contact Paul, Glad or Tim and ORS.

URBAN RESILIENCE COMPETITION: RECOGNIZING INNOVATIONS THAT BUILD URBAN RESILIENCE IN ASIA

USAID, United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and United Nations Global Pulse are hosting the Asia Urban Futures Workshop to bring the science and technology sectors together with the development community in a novel way to discuss the rising challenges and opportunities facing Asia as the result of rapid urbanization and climate change. The workshop supports partnerships between progressive city planners and development practitioners, who will highlight examples of positive actions already being taken, and technology leaders and innovators, who will present transformative approaches to increase urban adaptation and improve urban planning. Together with the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network, the workshop organizers are launching an Urban Resilience Competition to recognize new and innovative approaches to building urban resilience particularly through broad partnerships that contribute to inclusive and pro-poor actions.

The primary objective of the Urban Resilience Competition is to showcase new and innovative work already being undertaken in the field of urban resilience that offers transformative solutions; combines multi-disciplinary perspectives; and builds partnerships in a bottom-up participatory manner of design and implementation. By highlighting key initiatives that take the principles of scaling up and inclusivity into account, we hope this work will serve as an inspiration for others in addressing common and persistent urban resilience challenges.

Three winners of the Urban Resilience Competition will be selected and will receive travel support to attend the Asia Urban Futures Workshop, and present their work in a panel discussion on urban resilience. In addition, the winning projects will be publicized broadly regionally and globally through press releases and social media posts by USAID and the UN agencies. Winners will also receive a social media guidance packet to help communicate their selection as a winner to their broader social media network.

Applications:

The application process is simple and brief, please apply by submitting this form

Application Deadline:  September 15, 2014

Applicants can be individuals, organizations, city planning groups or governments who have developed, or contributed to, multi-disciplinary, innovative initiatives focused on urban resilience in Asia.

Projects must relate to one of the following themes, in the context of urban resilience:

• Environmental Sustainability: climate change, energy saving
• Disaster Protection: flood, drought, earthquake prediction and protection
• Urban Planning and Governance: city planning and budgeting, vulnerability and modeling, slum development, urban sanitation, urban services
• Reducing Poverty and Inequality: empowering women, education, economic inclusion, novel business models for urban workforce

We are seeking projects contributing to long-term urban resilience that have either recently piloted or been established within the past three years. Applications will be evaluated by a panel of judges, and the decision of the judges will be final .

Review criteria:

• Innovation- the ground-breaking nature of the activity, for instance, pioneering of new decision-making, planning or implementation methodologies

• Sustainability and inclusion – including integration with government planning, bottom-up participatory approaches with community inclusion and contribution to long-term alleviation of vulnerability

• Evidence based decision making – including use of futures analysis, scenario planning, or other robust analytical processes and sound data
• Measurable impact and transformational results – as reflected by quantifiable project accomplishments in addressing one of the four thematic areas
• Scope/potential for scalability

The application process is simple and brief, please apply by submitting this form:

Application Deadline:  September 15, 2014

ERC Advanced Grants Call

ERC Advanced Grants support excellent Principal Investigators with a recognized track record of research achievements. 

This call is open to researchers of any nationality to conduct their research activity in any ERC Member State or Associated Country.

The ERC's frontier research grants operate on a bottom-up basis, and have three separate research domains:

• Physical Sciences & Engineering
• Life Sciences 
• Social Sciences & Humanities

The budget for the three domains combined is 450,000,000 euros. 

The submission deadline is the 21st of October, 2014. For more details and relevant documents, visit the ERC call announcement. 

Please visit ORS or email Paul, Glad or Tim if you are interested in applying for these grants. 

NIH Grant: Mobile Health: Technology and Outcomes in Low and Middle Income Countries (R21), PAR-14-028

NIH has announced a request for application for collaborative projects looking at Mobile Health in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC).

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity is to encourage exploratory/developmental research applications that propose to study the development or adaptation of innovative mobile health (mHealth) technology specifically suited for LMICs and the health-related outcomes associated with implementation of the technology. Of highest interest are well-designed multidisciplinary projects that focus on tools or interventions for chronic diseases or technology for disease agnostic/cross-cutting applications.

Applicants are required to propose partnerships between at least one U.S. institution and one LMIC institution. The overall goal of the FOA is to contribute to the evidence base for the use of mobile technology to improve clinical outcomes and public health while building research capacity in LMICs and establishing research networks in this area.

Key info:

• Letter of Intent due date: January 19, 2015
• Application due date: February 19 2015
• Earliest project start date: September, 2015

• Award Budget: Applicants may request up to $125,000 direct costs per year.
• Total project period may not exceed 2 years

If you are interested, click here for the full RFA. If you are considering applying, please get in touch with Paul, Tim, or Glad at the Office of Rersearch Services.