NEXLEAF ANALYTICS
Receives Grand Challenges Explorations Grant
For Groundbreaking Research in Global Health and Development
Los Angeles – Nexleaf Analytics announced today that it is a Grand Challenges
Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr.
Nithya Ramanathan, President, will pursue an innovative global health and
development research project, titled “ColdTrace: Cellphone Sensor for Cold Chain
Monitoring.”
Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) funds individuals worldwide to explore ideas
that can break the mold in how we solve persistent global health and development
challenges.
Dr. Ramanathan’s project is one of over 100 Grand Challenges
Explorations Round 8 grants announced today by the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation.
“Grand Challenges Explorations encourages individuals worldwide to expand the
pipeline of ideas where creative, unorthodox thinking is most urgently needed,” said
Chris Wilson, director of Global Health Discovery and Translational Sciences at the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation. “We’re excited to provide additional funding for select
grantees so that they can continue to advance their idea towards global impact.”
To receive funding, Dr. Ramanathan and other Grand Challenges Explorations Round
8 winners demonstrated in a two-page online application a bold idea in one of five
critical global heath and development topic areas that included agriculture
development, immunization and nutrition. Applications for the current open round,
Grand Challenges Explorations Round 9, will be accepted through May 15, 2012.
With deployments planned in Haiti and Malawi, the ColdTrace project aims to ensure
that vaccines and other temperature-sensitive medicines get to their destinations
safely by remotely monitoring the temperatures of refrigerated units used to store
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and transport vaccines and drugs.
The project will develop and test a low-cost
device built with common cellphones that makes cold chain monitoring widely
available. Broadening the capabilities of cellphones to collect and wirelessly transmit
temperature data, the device will integrate with logistics management information
systems in order to oversee and provide alerts about cold chain equipment at each
stage of vaccine distribution.
Nexleaf Analytics will be working closely with Direct
Relief International and Medic Mobile on the deployments.
The project will be overseen by Dr. Ramanathan. Dr. Ramanathan also serves as an
Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Dr. Ramanathan began developing
mobile phone sensing applications after joining UCLA as a research faculty member,
where she received one of the highly competitive National Institutes of Health $1M
Challenge Grants to develop mobile platforms to improve the cardiovascular health
of women. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA and holds a B.S.
degree from the University of California at Berkeley in Electrical Engineering. She has
published widely in peer-reviewed journals and has presented at, and served on the
program committee for, conferences throughout the world. She is also a Switzer
Environmental Fellow, a 2011 PopTech Social Innovation Fellow, and was recently
invited to be a Rainer Arnhold Fellow. Additionally, Dr. Ramanathan has served as a
consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
About Grand Challenges Explorations
Grand Challenges Explorations is a US$100 million initiative funded by the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation. Launched in 2008, over 600 people in 45 countries have
received Grand Challenges Explorations grants.
The grant program is open to
anyone from any discipline and from any organization. The initiative uses an agile,
accelerated grant-making process with short two-page online applications and no
preliminary data required. Initial grants of US$100,000 are awarded two times a year.
Successful projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to US$1
million.
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About Nexleaf Analytics
Nexleaf Analytics is a leader in developing cellphone innovations for use in
environmental and public health interventions, and is dedicated toward making
cellphone sensing technologies available to communities and organizations around
the world.
For more information, please contact us at info@nexleaf.org or visit us at
www.nexleaf.org.
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