Arash Shaban-Nejad, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center has received a $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations award from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Shaban-Nejad will pursue an innovative global health and development research project titled, “A Semantic Framework to Support Evolution and Interoperability.”

The Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) supports innovative thinkers worldwide to explore ideas that can break the mold in how persistent global health and development challenges can be solved. Shaban-Nejad is one of approximately 55 researchers from around the world who successfully demonstrated a bold idea in one of six critical global heath and development topic areas for the GCE Round 17. Specifically, he is focused on the topic area “Design New Analytics Approaches for Malaria Elimination.”