Gates Foundation - Grand Challenges in Global Health

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is now accepting grant proposals for the Grand Challenges Explorations, a $100 million initiative to encourage bold and unconventional global health solutions.

Anyone can apply, regardless of your prior experience or institutional affiliation. Previous winners include graduate students, entrepreneurs at start-up companies, and creative thinkers from all fields of research.
 
Proposals are currently being accepted online until November 2, 2009 on the following topics:
Create New Ways to Protect Against Infectious Disease
Create Low-Cost Diagnostics for Priority Global Health Conditions
Create New Ways to Induce and Measure Mucosal Immunity
Create New Technologies for Contraception
 
Initial grants will be $100,000 each, and projects showing promise will have the opportunity to receive additional funding of up to $1 million. Full descriptions of topics and application instructions are available at: http://www.grandchallenges.org/explorations.
We look forward to receiving innovative ideas from scientists around the world and from all scientific disciplines. If you don't submit a proposal yourself, we hope you will forward this message to someone else who might be interested.