Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $62,000 to Michael Specter to support his work updating and teaching two courses related to existential risk at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
This follows our September 2023 support for teaching the same courses in a previous year.
We sought applications for this funding to support the development of courses on a range of topics that are relevant to certain areas of Open Philanthropy’s grantmaking.
Open Philanthropy recommended a gift of $135,000 to Esade to support course buyouts that will enable Professor Uri Simonsohn to work on the development of AsCollected, a simple protocol for establishing the provenance of data in academic science.
This falls within our focus area of innovation policy.
Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $259,582 to Global Development Incubator to support strategy development for preventing and reducing lead exposure globally.
This falls within our focus area of global public health policy.
Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $15,162,840 to Longview Philanthropy to support its operational costs. Longview Philanthropy provides education, advisory and grantmaking services to donors who want to maximize the impact of their giving.
This follows our December 2023 support and falls within our focus area of Global Catastrophic Risks Capacity Building.
Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $282,000 to Yale University to support research on preventing dangerous inflammatory responses called “cytokine storms,” which can occur during CAR-T cancer therapy and severe infections like sepsis. Led by Dr. Michael Simons, the research focuses on controlling VISTA, a protein that regulates inflammation in the body.
This falls within our focus area of scientific research.
The grant amount was updated in May 2025.
Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $410,309 to The Kids Research Institute Australia to support modeling efforts aimed at optimizing malaria vaccine development, led by Melissa Penny. This work will evaluate the potential impact of various malaria vaccines and vaccine combinations, focusing on understanding the contribution of different vaccine antigens in specific use cases and target populations. The goal is to identify the most effective and impactful vaccines for development.
This falls within our focus area of global health R&D.
Open Philanthropy recommended a gift of $200,000 to Stanford University to support research on how consumers respond to alternative proteins and on other interventions to reduce meat consumption. The research will be led by Maya Mathur at the university’s Humane & Sustainable Food Lab.
This follows our November 2023 support and falls within our focus area of farm animal welfare.
Open Philanthropy recommended a contract of $820,000 over two years with Mission Realization, led by Neysa Colizzi, to support its focus on strategic, leadership, and organizational development for farm animal welfare organizations.
This follows our July 2022 support and falls within our focus area of farm animal welfare.
This project was supported through a contractor agreement. While we typically do not publish pages for contractor agreements, we occasionally opt to do so.
Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $879,136 to Sightsavers to support a trial in Ethiopia testing whether adding ivermectin to standard trachoma mass drug administration efforts can improve disease elimination efforts.
This falls within our focus area of global health R&D.
Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $2,000,000 over two years to Mila to support the institute’s research on AI safety.
This falls within our focus area of potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence.