Knowledge Generation

Federico Costa of the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil, Mitermayer Galvão dos Reis of Fiocruz, Brazil, and Nathan Grubaugh and Albert I Ko of Yale University in the U.S. will establish metagenomic next generation sequencing in clinical settings in an urban region of Brazil classified as an infectious disease ‘hot spot’ to help develop new diagnostics and identify emerging pathogens.

David Mills of the University of California, Davis in the U.S. will determine whether specific plant-based oligosaccharide formulations can drive mixed-culture growth of selected strains of intestinal bacteria for the low-cost and efficient production of live biotherapeutics. Microbial colonization in the human gut is important for overall health. It has been shown that oligosaccharides can provide a food niche to specifically enrich key colonizing bacteria, even in the competitive environment of the human gut.

Casey Brown of the University of Massachusetts in the U.S. is building a water distribution network with digital platform to provide affordable access to safe drinking water for poor urban populations. Public water infrastructure in low- and middle-income areas is often poorly maintained and insufficient for rapidly growing cities. This has led to additional water being provided in tankers by private companies, which is expensive and the water quality is often poor.

Benedict Mongula of the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania will analyze two apparently conflicting national agricultural policies centered on either large-scale agriculture or smallholder farmers and determine how to combine them to benefit all stakeholders for inclusive agricultural transformation. Agriculture is central to the Tanzanian economy, yet its impact is limited by a lack of infrastructure, education, and market access.

William Kunin of the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom will develop methods to monitor agricultural pest outbreaks in Africa using data from dual-polarization weather radar. Pest infestation is responsible for up to 50% of pre-harvest crop loss in Central Africa, and control depends on the ability to monitor local pest outbreaks and movement over large areas – a difficult and expensive task. Sophisticated dual polarization Doppler weather radar is designed to detect airborne objects like rain and hail.

Cara Brook, Jean-Michel Héraud, and Soa Fy Andriamandimby of the Pasteur Institute in Madagascar, and Jessica Metcalf of Princeton University in the U.S. will establish metagenomic next generation sequencing (NGS) in Madagascar to analyze samples from undiagnosed fever patients and from bats to identify bat-derived viruses that cause human infectious diseases and help develop new diagnostics. It is estimated that up to 75% of emerging human diseases are derived from an animal reservoir.

Alain Labrique of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the U.S. and Meghan Azad of the University of Manitoba in Canada will study the impact of prelacteals - fluids or solids given before breastfeeding is established - on the populations of bacteria in the newborn gut (the microbiome), and how it may affect development. Immediate and exclusive breastfeeding helps maintain healthy growth in infants and protects them against infections, which are also influenced by their gut microbiome.

Alpha Sennon of WHYFARM in Trinidad and Tobago, along with Wainella Isaacs, Candace Charles-Sennon, Luke Smith, George Caesar, Akinola Sennon and their partners at TECH4Agri, will engage young people, who are the future feeders of 2050, in agriculture, and develop their knowledge and skills so that they can promote sustainable agriculture and improve food security in Trinidad and Tobago. They will implement four related projects in which participants can win cash prizes.

Hussein Khalil of the Federal University of Bahia in Brazil will provide young people in urban slums with knowledge and tools to identify elements that promote the spread of diseases by rats and mosquitos such as dengue and Zika virus infection, and engage their communities to help combat those diseases. They will recruit 40 young residents from two urban slums to test their approach.

Design a high-throughput peptide array technology to identify immunodominant peptides capable of distinguishing 10 Flavivirus taxa. Using the identified immunodominant peptides, the team will generate an indirect ELISA protocol that can be used in developing countries to accurately measure the seroprevalence of multiple Flavivirus species simultaneously, including ZIKV and be developed further into a point-of-care diagnostic.