lucknow the bill melinda gates foundation on thursday announced a new round of winners as part of its grand challenges explorations gce initiative gce grants fund innovative ideas to tackle persistent global health and development problems winning proposals this round will tackle a wide range of issues including using social data for social good the next generation of condom helping women farmers in the developing world new interventions for neglected diseases and bringing together human and animal health for new solutions winners spanning 14 countries were selected from more than 2700 proposals winners represent a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines including design professionals health researchers polymer engineers entrepreneurs and publicprivate coalitions grand challenges explorations is designed to foster the most innovative ideas to save the lives of the worlds poorest people said chris wilson director of the discovery translational sciences team at the bill melinda gates foundation although these five areas are very different solving each one of these problems in new ways could make a huge impact each of the 81 projects announced today received 100000 in funding to address one of the following topics increasing interoperability of social good data the world isawash in data and computing power and while most industries are racing to take advantage of this resource and capability many in the social sector are not yet able to do so easilyprojects are working to improve the availability and use of impact data by bringing together information from multiple organizations operating in similar fields and geographical areas to better track performance and manage programs projects include pushpa singh of the civil society information services india in mumbai will build a validated searchable and uptodate ngo information source to store information from multiple sources on notforprofit organizations to make it easier to access support from philanthropic intermediaries philanthropic intermediaries currently perform independent searches to find appropriate ngo partners to support which costs time money and effort develop the next generation of condom quite simply condoms save lives but new thinking is needed to ensure that men and women around the world are using them consistently and correctly to prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections these projects are working to improve uptake and regular use of male and female condoms by developing new condoms that significantly preserve or enhance pleasure and by developing better packaging or designs that are easier to properly use projects include lakshminarayanan ragupathy of hll lifecare ltd in trivandrum will work to improve the safety and enhance the sensitivity of male condoms by incorporating graphene into condommaking materials they will mix graphene with currently used condom materials to produce thinner heat conducting condoms and incorporate drugs and compounds to further enhance safety as well as sexual experience labor saving innovations for women smallholder farmers three quarters of the worlds poorest people get their food and income from farming small plots of land typically the size of a football field or smaller most of them