Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $54,620 to Zipline to carry out scoping work on using drones to increase vaccination uptake. This grant will support Zipline staff to conduct desk-based research, stakeholder consultations, and preliminary program and evaluation design work for the most promising ideas. This grant was made on GiveWell’s recommendation.
See GiveWell’s page on this grant for more details.
Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $3,000,000 over two years to 1Day Sooner for general support. 1Day Sooner seeks novel ways to advance the fight against infectious diseases, building on the contributions of human research participants worldwide, especially participants in human challenge trials.
1Day Sooner also conducts research and advocacy to explore related scientific, regulatory, and policy measures that can be used both to reduce the burden of infectious diseases today and prepare the world against future pandemic threats. You can view their original grant proposal here.
This follows our October 2023 support and falls within our work on global health and wellbeing.
Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $251,110 over two years to High Impact Professionals (HIP) for general support. HIP helps impact-oriented working professionals have a higher social impact by maintaining a talent directory of job seekers and running an accelerator program for promising professionals.
This follows our March 2023 support and falls within our focus area of empowering people to use their careers and donations to help others as much as possible.
Open Philanthropy recommended a gift of $100,000 to Stanford University to support increased testing for Avian Influenza A (H5N1) in human clinical samples from areas in California’s Central Valley, near sources of potentially infected cow herds. Professor Ben Pinsky will lead the work.
H5N1 continues to spread on farms, namely in poultry and dairy cattle. A recent paper in Science shows that a single point mutation can switch the receptor binding from birds to humans, suggesting that transmission to humans may be more likely than previously thought.
This falls within our focus area of scientific research.
Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $59,400 to the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative to support the InterACT Laboratory. Led by Anca Dragan, the lab focuses on enabling AI agents to work with, around, and in support of people. We’re also supporting this work with a recent gift to UC Berkeley.
This falls within our focus area of potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence.
Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $5,732,100 over two years to the Vaccine Formulation Institute to support the clinical development of novel, open-access adjuvants. Adjuvants are key components added to vaccines that enhance the body’s immune response — an essential step in developing effective vaccines against complex global health diseases.
This falls within our focus area of global health R&D.
Open Philanthropy recommended a gift of $775,000 to UC Berkeley to support the InterACT Laboratory. Led by Anca Dragan, the lab focuses on enabling AI agents to work with, around, and in support of people. We’re also supporting this work with a recent grant to the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative.
This falls within our focus area of potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence.
Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of £100,000 (approximately $125,210 at the time of conversion) over two years to The Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) to support a collaboration with the Structural Transformation and Economic Growth (STEG) program and the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS) on predicting the macroeconomic impacts of cash transfers. The initiative will complement a large, multi-year randomized controlled trial (RCT) conducted by GiveDirectly.
STEG has issued a call for proposals on research papers that predict the macroeconomic effects of cash transfers. Accepted papers will be presented at a BITSS workshop, and their pre-registered predictions will continue to be evaluated against measured outcomes from the RCTs.
This falls within our focus areas of forecasting and global health and wellbeing.
Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of INR 13,970,000 (approximately $163,291 at the time of conversion) to the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi to support research led by Professors Rahul Goel and Gazala Habib on measuring emissions from commercial trucks in Delhi.
It is poorly understood how much emissions vary by vehicle age and weight. By measuring emissions in real-world conditions, Goel and Habib hope to address gaps in the current research.
This falls within our focus area of global public health policy.
Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of INR 16,607,141 (approximately $194,920 at the time of conversion) to the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy to support an independent assessment of the 15th Finance Commission‘s air quality grants to Indian cities, publish a report on the findings, and engage with the 16th Finance Commission as they prepare their recommendations.
This falls within our focus area of global public health policy.