David Wright & Rick Haselton - Gates Foundation Award recipients

Grand Challenges Explorations fosters creative projects that show great promise to improve the health of people in the developing world. Initial grants are awarded two times a year, and successful projects have the opportunity to receive additional funding of $1 million or more.

On October 21, 2009, the Gates Foundation announced that 76 new global health projects received Grand Challenges Explorations grants.

Project: "Coffee Ring Stain" Diagnostics for Malaria
Drs. Wright and Haselton of Vanderbilt University in the U.S. will develop a new low-cost diagnostic tool in which a droplet of malaria-infected blood deposited on a glass slide will, based on fluid dynamics, leave a ring-like pattern as the blood evaporates. The slide will be prepared with a solution that will interact with a particular protein of the malaria parasite to visualize this "coffee ring stain," allowing for easy interpretation and ready diagnosis.

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