NEW YORK, May 22, 2015—Fourteen new multilateral university partnerships have been created by the Global Innovation Initiative, a program funded by the U.S. and UK governments to foster multilateral research collaboration with higher education institutions in Brazil, China, India and Indonesia.
Each partnership will receive a grant of up to $200,000 to fund research activities, faculty and researcher exchange, joint publications and symposia, and other multilateral efforts. The total funding for these partnership grants is approximately $3 million. In addition, the partner universities will support these projects with their own resources, such as use of laboratories, staff and faculty salaries, and private sector contributions valued at a total of roughly $8.1 million.
Each of the winning proposals address topics of global significance in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), including energy, climate change and the environment; agriculture, food security and water; global health; and urban development. The winning partnerships and their research topics are listed below.
The goals of this joint effort between the U.S. and UK are to raise the bar for international collaboration while developing a new cadre of globally-savvy individuals, enhancing global research capacity, strengthening higher education institutional cooperation, and promoting the benefits of multilateral partnerships.
The initiative is funded by the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the British Council, which also serves as the implementing partner in the UK, and the U.S. Department of State. In the United States, the Institute of International Education is implementing the grant program in partnership with the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
The Global Innovation Initiative was created to support multilateral research collaboration to address global challenges, in keeping with the vision of UK Prime Minister David Cameron and U.S. President Barack Obama’s joint statements on UK and U.S. higher education co-operation in 2011 and 2012.
Evan Ryan, Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs, stated: “The Global Innovation Initiative provides an opportunity for the U.S. and UK governments to expand upon our longstanding and robust partnership to support multilateral cooperation with partners in Brazil, China, India, and Indonesia. The excellent proposals of this year’s award recipients are testament to the combination of the recipients’ deep subject-matter expertise and active commitment to collaboratively addressing issues of pressing global concern.”
More information about the competition can be found on the Global Innovation Initiative’s website.
U.S. Awardees
Ohio State University, University of Nottingham (UK), and the Federal University of Paraiba (Brazil)*
Strengthening Global One Health Research and Training Capacity: Applying cutting-edge genomic technologies to prevent the global emergence of antimicrobial resistance
University of Florida, Cardiff University (UK), and the University of Indonesia (Indonesia)*
Novel approaches of employing green infrastructure (GI) to enhance urban sustainability
University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Durham University (UK), Tsinghua University (China), and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (China) *
Debris Flows: Influences on Natural Resources and Hazard Mitigation under a Changing Climate
University of North Texas, University College London (UK), and the State University of Ponta Grossa (Brazil)*
Implementing and monitoring a sustainable desalination pilot-scale plant
University of Pittsburgh, Coventry University (UK), Bogor Agricultural University (Indonesia), and the Indian Institute of Technology-Bogor (India)
Bamboo in the Urban Environment
Yale University, Heriot-Watt University (UK), and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (China)
Increasing the efficiency of CO2 conversion to liquid fuels
UK Awardees
Aston University, University of Wisconsin-Madison (U.S.), Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (China), University of Kentucky (U.S.), University of Massachusetts, Amherst (U.S.), and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
Global Bioenergy, Biofuels and Biorefining Network: GB3-Net
Bangor University, Western Carolina University (U.S.), Bogor Agricultural University (Indonesia), Bandung Institute of Technology (Indonesia), Universitas Diponegoro (Indonesia), Universitas Brawijaya (Indonesia), Southeast Asian Region for Tropical Biology (Indonesia), and Aberystwyth University (UK)
Establishing a network of research excellence for mine reclamation in Southeast Asia
Imperial College London, University of Texas, Austin (U.S.), Beijing Normal University (China), University of Delhi (India), Polar Research Institute of China (China), British Antarctic Survey (UK), and the University of Bristol (UK)
ICECAP2 – International Collaborative Exploration of Central East Antarctica through Airborne geophysical Profiling
University of Bradford, North Carolina State University (U.S.), and the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (India)
SITARA: Smart Grid to harness Satellite based Virtual Power Plants for energy sustainability
University of Edinburgh, Weill Cornell Medical College (U.S.), and the Christian Medical College (India)
Oral and cervical cancer in rural India: Using mHealth and primary care to improve prevention, screening and early diagnosis
University of Exeter, University of Central Florida (U.S.), and Tsinghua University (China)
Flood impact assessment in mega cities under urban sprawl and climate change
University of Sheffield, University of Michigan (U.S.), and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China)
Novel nanostructured conjugates for deep sensitive cancer detection and noninvasive highly efficient cancer therapy
University of Surrey, University of Chicago (U.S.), and the University of São Paulo (Brazil)
Sleep, circadian rhythms, and cardiovascular health across ethnicities – a small Brazilian town as a model for global health issues
*Pending final award execution
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