The Gates Foundation Programme:- A lot of the faculty members wanted to know how they could help and how we can all bring more bright people into the fight against disease and poverty. Here is a few ideas about this can help researchers from different fields have an impact on the world’s poorest people. 1. Find ways to apply technology so it helps the world’s poorest people solve problems. For the poorest 2 billion people, progress in the most important areas — health and agriculture — will depend on advances in technology, from computer science to genetics, materials science, and energy. For example, in health, computer-based disease modeling is a big area. To eradicate a disease, we need to understand how it’s affected by things like weather or the movement of insect populations (malaria is spread by mosquitoes). A technique called stochastic modeling — which involves running a lot of computer simulations where you randomize different variables and study the outcome — is helping us understand the impact of the various factors so we can get the right mix of tools to fight different diseases. There are many examples from other fields. Geneticists can help develop crops that are more nutritious, disease-resistant, and drought-tolerant. Someone who’s interested in finance can help drive innovations such as digital currency that reduce transaction costs so that poor people can borrow at five percent a year instead of 15 percent. People with a passion for education can develop software that models what the student knows, interacts with and encourages her, and helps the teacher see what she’s been doing. So there’s a lot of opportunity. But these advances won’t happen unless bright young people enter these fields. The second priority: 2. Attract more of the world’s brightest people into technical fields. We need a constant stream of new people coming into these fields with fresh energy and ideas. And it needs to draw from a broad range of people — meaning different ethnicities, income levels, and countries. After all, no nation has a monopoly on talent or on the best way of looking at a problem. I wish rich countries did more to draw their brightest people into the sciences. We also need researchers from developing countries, though that’s hard because few of them have great universities where people can get top training. We need to look at ways to strengthen those schools through partnerships. We can also expand opportunities for young people to study in other countries and then return home to start their careers. And we definitely need to encourage more women to enter technical fields. As we bring more bright young people into the sciences, there’s a third step to making sure it has an impact for the poorest two billion: 3. Show experts how they can help solve these problems. Of course there has to be a financial incentive to draw people in. Governments and philanthropy can establish grants and prizes. They can also set up funds to guarantee that there will be a market to pay for advances if they’re developed. The Gates Foundation has a program called Grand Challenges in Global Health, which is designed to help experts from various fields see how they can help save lives in the poorest countries. That’s just one example, though, and the world could use a lot more.
Posted on: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 10:31:02 +0000
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