**NOTE: This opportunity is open only to participants who registered for the 2025 Grand Challenges Annual Meeting.
Before applying, applicants should familiarize themselves with the supporting documents for this Grand Challenge, including the Rules and Guidelines, Application Instructions, and Frequently Asked Questions.
The Opportunity
The Grand Challenges Annual Meeting fosters innovation and international collaboration to address the biggest challenges in global health and development. It has been held in 13 countries over the past 20 years and in a virtual format for three years, including this year's. The 2025 meeting continues the Annual Meeting's goal to support a global community of problem solvers who work together to set an innovation agenda and do the breakthrough science to deliver on it – to go further and faster together.
The Challenge
This Call-to-Action provides an opportunity for those registered for the 2025 Grand Challenges Annual Meeting to take action based on ideas they develop and people they engage with during the virtual meeting. For individuals who will not be able to attend the sessions in real time, recordings will be available post-meeting and we encourage all registered participants to watch them and engage with other participants before applying. As noted by past applicants in their submitted proposals, the meeting provides diverse ways to combine expertise and perspectives to speed up the impact of what would otherwise be separate work by individual investigators. The grants awarded for past Call-to-Action opportunities show this, and we hope that this year's meeting will also provide ways to catalyze collaborative projects that yield a tangible solution to a key problem by the end of the grant.
Funding
Each meeting participant will have one opportunity to apply as the primary applicant, on behalf of their institution, for a USD $100,000 grant or a collaborative USD $200,000 grant, both with an 18-month grant duration. Collaborative awards require the participation of one meeting participant and one or more collaborators from different institutions. While restricted to one application as the primary applicant, meeting participants may participate as collaborators in multiple collaborative applications. Priority will be given to new or newly expanded collaborations, rather than to existing collaborations seeking new funding.
Eligibility Criteria
- Participants who registered for the 2025 Grand Challenges Annual Meeting are eligible to apply as a Primary Applicant on behalf of an organization with which they are affiliated and will receive further information via email.
- Applications are permitted from both non-US and US organizations, including non-profit organizations, for-profit companies, international organizations, government agencies, and academic institutions.
- Individuals and organizations classified as individuals for U.S. tax purposes are not eligible to receive an award from the foundation as part of this initiative.
- Employees, officers, and directors of the Gates Foundation are not eligible to apply as Primary Applicants nor as collaborators for either type of proposal.
- We encourage proposals led by scientists based in low- and middle-income countries and women or women-led institutions.
We will give highest priority to proposed projects that:
- Contribute to a partnership network that empowers those with the local perspective required to direct the right approaches to the right parts of the problems to ensure success. This includes projects led by investigators from low- and middle-income countries and a balanced representation of women principal investigators. Their collective action and directed energy will help solve today's key problems in global health, while building research networks ready to solve tomorrow's.
- Are explicitly aligned with the content within the meeting's scientific track sessions. Please note that proposals will be reviewed based on their alignment with one primary track and the specific content presented there (see meeting agenda), since we seek to provide an opportunity for participants to take action based on an idea that they developed and people they engaged during their virtual participation in a scientific track. Eligible scientific tracks for this Call-to-Action are listed below.
Scientific tracks eligible for the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting Call-to-Action
- Vaccines & Biologics - Innovation & Platforms
- Advancing Drug Discovery for Global Health
- Strengthening Innovation Ecosystems to Solve Global Health Challenges
- Advancing Women's Health Data, Science & Technology
- Strengthening the Women's Health R&D Ecosystem
We will not consider funding approaches that:
- Are not explicitly aligned with the specific content within the meeting scientific tracks listed above that are eligible for this request for proposals.
- Address the meeting scientific track that is not part of this request for proposals: Strengthening Data Modelling for Global Health & Development in Africa