TropIQ Health Sciences — Antimalarial Bednet Drug Screening

Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $500,000 over two years to TropIQ Health Sciences to support Dr. Flaminia Catteruccia’s research on a novel method of malaria prevention. The project will aim to identify drugs that more effectively target the malaria parasites within mosquitoes, with the goal of adding these drugs to bednets to prevent malaria transmission. This is one of two grants we’ve made to support this work.

This falls within our focus area of global health R&D.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign — Zero-knowledge Proofs for Secure AI Audits

Open Philanthropy recommended a gift of $615,000 over two years to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to support research led by Professor Daniel Kang on using zero-knowledge proofs for third-party AI model evaluations. 

Using zero-knowledge proofs during third-party evals could allow both the AI model provider and third party to verify information about the model without revealing model weights.

This grant was funded via a request for proposals for projects related to the responsible governance of AI. This follows our December 2024 support, and falls within our focus area of potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence.

Stanford University — New Method for Lead Paint Measurement

Image courtesy of the Stanford Center for Human and Planetary Health

Open Philanthropy recommended a gift of $100,796 over two years to Project Unleaded, based at the Stanford Center for Human and Planetary Health, to support research led by Dr. Jenna Forsyth to develop and demonstrate a new reference method for measuring lead in paint, using portable X-ray fluorescence (XRF) devices. We’re also supporting this project with grants to Mercer University and the Lead Exposure Elimination Project.

This falls within our focus area of global public health policy.

UC Berkeley — In-line Water Chlorination Devices 

Open Philanthropy recommended a gift of $550,000 to UC Berkeley to support work led by Professor Amy Pickering to develop and evaluate low-cost in-line water chlorination devices. Such devices could improve drinking water quality in low-resource settings and lessen the burden of diarrheal disease. This grant was originally funded by the National Institutes of Health, but was recently canceled.

This follows our December 2021 support and falls within our work on scientific research, specifically within our interest in advancing human health and wellbeing.