In a further move to bolster the role of science and technology in foreign aid, the
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) today announced major awards at seven universities in the United States and abroad to support
"development labs" that will design innovative, low-cost approaches to improving health and reducing poverty and conflicts. "This is USAID trying to build
a DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] for development," says Alex Dehgan, the agency's science adviser. DARPA has a reputation for backing
high-risk research projects that produce big payoffs, from the Internet to stealth aircraft.
The USAID program is for $130 million over 5 years, with a 60% required match from the universities. Each of the seven institutions will receive grants of
up to $5 million a year for projects aimed at developing useful technologies. As an example, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah cited a cheap bucket filter
designed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge to take arsenic out of ground water in Bangladesh. "We want that kind of student
ingenuity to show us what is possible," Shah said in a teleconference.
Science and technology have received a greater emphasis at the agency since Shah took over. USAID has started a grand challenges grant program, which invests
in new technologies for small-scale farmers, early education of children, and other needs. In addition, the agency also puts millions into an innovation
ventures fund, which takes a venture capital approach to funding new ideas. USAID also now
partners with the U.S. National Science Foundation to give grants to boost science in developing countries.
For the new program, called the Higher Education Solutions Network, USAID issued a call for proposals in February.
They received more than 500 proposals, which were peer reviewed by several panels. The goal was to have interdisciplinary teams, with already funded
partners, that would set up new hubs and networks in the developing world. Compared with existing USAID programs, Shah said: "We expect this to be more
upstream, with more interdisciplinary collaborations, and more open space to come up with new solutions." Shah said that USAID intends to have more
requests for proposals in the future.
The agency is focusing on problems to be solved, but "not dictating the ways to solve it," Dehgan says.
Pedro Sanchez, of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, likes the concept. "It's very innovative," he says. "It's very open, very interdisciplinary.
It's a great step forward."
The winners are:
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Texas A&M, which will study the "intersection between poverty, conflict, and food insecurity."
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Makerere University in Uganda, which will create an "international partnership that will apply science and technology to improve the resilience of African communities against natural and political stresses."
- MIT, which will "foster local innovation by supporting the ingenuity, creativity and resiliance [sic] of
people living in poverty" and evaluate technological solutions.
- Michigan State University, which will analyze how " population growth, rapid urbanization, climate change, pressures on land, and skills gaps" affect
food security.
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Duke University, which will "identify and scale promising new technologies in healthcare delivery and prevention."
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The University of California, Berkeley, which hopes "to create a new field of Development Engineering."
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The College of William & Mary, which will create "high resolution geospatial data and powerful analytical and GIS tools that enable USAID and the
global development community to more effectively target, monitor and evaluate aid projects and
programs."
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