Combating Zika - Award Nominees

Speeches Shim

To stop the spread of Zika and prevent other infectious disease outbreaks, USAID launched Combating Zika and Future Threats: A Grand Challenge for Development. The $30 million Challenge called upon the global innovator community to generate cutting-edge approaches to fight the current Zika outbreak and to help strengthen the world’s ability to prevent, detect, and respond to future infectious disease outbreaks.

In just nine weeks, USAID received nearly 900 submissions from across the globe in response to the Challenge. Following a rigorous review process, 21 potentially game changing solutions that cut across vector control, personal and household protection, vector and disease surveillance, diagnostics, and community engagement were selected for funding for accelerated development, testing and deployment. Five additional awards have been announced ranging from unmanned aerial vehicles delivering critical medical supplies in remote areas to the use of big data and machine learning to prevent future disease outbreaks.

Zika Innovations

Vector Control Monash University Scaled deployment of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes to block disease transmission
Michigan State University Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes to suppress population and block disease
Trustees of Indiana University Natural yeast-based larvicide
Johns Hopkins University Chromobacterium: an environmentally friendly biopesticide
Personal/Household Protection Barcelona Institute For Global Health Electric force field to repulse mosquitoes
Ifakara Research Institute Low-cost treated Sandals to prevent bites
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine Low-tech treated fabric for outdoor use
QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Inst. Low-cost treated wall hangings for indoor use
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Human scent mimic mosquito trap
Vector Surveillance Stanford University MosquitoFreq: Crowdsourced detection of Mosquitoes species using simple Flip Phones
University of Queensland Near infrared spectroscopy to detect transmission hotspots
Stanford University VectorChip: Design and testing for pathogen identification tools in wild mosquito populations
Sao Paolo University Intelligent trap to enhance Zika surveillance
Johns Hopkins University VectorWEB: Low-cost network of cloud connected ovitraps
Community Engagement Institute for Global Environmental Studies Mosquito Challenge Community Campaign: Kid citizen science to combat Zika
Johns Hopkins Center for Communications Programs Rapid Habit Optimization Tool (R-SHOT)
Disease Surveillance Premise Data Citizen-led disease risk mapping and vector monitoring
Dalberg Data Insights Monitoring population movement to determine areas prone to disease outbreak
Dimagi/Mt. Sinai Big data and machine-based learning to identify data cold spots to forecast disease hotspots
International Society for Infectious Diseases/ProMED/Imperial College London/HealthMap/healthsites.io Mapping the Risk of International Infectious Disease Spread
Diagnostics J. Craig Venter Institute Rapid identification of peptides to speed development of Zika diagnostics
Abbott’s Ibis Biosciences business Rapid, handheld point of care diagnostic for ZIKV, DENV, CHKV
BluSense Diagnostics Viro-Track: Rapid point of care diagnostic for ZIKV, DENV, CHKV using blue ray technology
SystemOne Aspect™ IoT software to prevent future outbreaks
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Vayu Use of UAVs for delivery/pick-up of medical products and samples
WeRobotics Mosquito release mechanism on UAVs to support mosquito control

 

Date 
Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - 3:30pm