Does Grand Challenges attract developing world scientists?
Roughly 10–11 per cent of applications came from the developing world and 10–11 per cent of the funded applications came from the developing world — they did as well as people from the developed world. We had a scientist in the last round from Kenya who was working with a group from Canada who had come to Kenya to try to understand why some sex workers were highly exposed to HIV but didn’t get HIV. When they stopped having frequent sex they got exposed again so it wasn’t quite clear what causes their resistance. He couldn’t get funding in Kenya and went to Canada to get some training. He’d gone back to Kenya and pored through the data and made the link between potential — or a propensity to — diabetes and resistance to HIV so he’s pursuing that. Have you ever funded very simple ideas? There was one from someone in Africa in the first round who was going to use the house as a means of baiting and trapping mosquitoes. That was very basic. They did get funded though. Are you interested in
