Health Grand Challenge
In 2007 Princeton launched the Grand Challenges Initiative, an integrated research and teaching program to promote student involvement and faculty research on three important issues related to the environment, technology, and public policy. One of these issues is global health and infectious disease, which is addressed by the Health Grand Challenge.
The multidisciplinary projects have included research collaborations in anthropology, chemistry, ecology and evolutionary biology, engineering, molecular biology, and policy. These projects support and expand the interdisciplinary reach of the Global Health Initiative and provide additional educational and research opportunities in global health for undergraduate and graduate students.
Faculty engaged in Health Grand Challenge research have investigated treatment and detection of malaria and tuberculosis, infectious disease policies and politics in developing countries, locally appropriate technologies for preventing water-borne illnesses, and the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.
Students participate in this research through summer internships in settings that range from laboratories in Princeton, to policy organizations in Washington, D.C. and Geneva, to academic and not-for-profit institutions in Brazil, South Africa, Guatemala, Liberia, El Salvador, Sierra Leone, India, Kenya and Ghana.