Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists”: Great ideas from the next round of Grand Challenges Explorations
Steven Buchsbaum, deputy director, and Rebekah Neal, program officer, both with the Discovery and Translational Sciences team in Global Health at the Gates Foundation, discuss the Grand Challenges Explorations initiative and “announce funding for 35 potential new solutions posed by researchers in 17 countries.” The authors summarize several of the awardees’ proposals (5/29).

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists”: Ending the Pandemic Threat: A Grand Challenge for Universal Influenza Vaccine Development
Keith Klugman, director for the Pneumonia team of the Global Health Program at the Gates Foundation, writes, “The risk of a serious flu pandemic in the next 20 years is significant — and what used to be a five-day ocean voyage is now a five-hour flight, so the next one is likely to spread much farther, much faster. The world is not ready to meet this challenge. … That is why our foundation, in partnership with the Page family, has issued a $12 million Grand Challenge to catalyze development of radically more effective influenza vaccines…” (5/29).