October 15, 2015, Beijing (People's Daily Online)--The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (the foundation) and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST) will co-host the 11th Grand Challenges Annual Meeting, together with Grand Challenges Canada, the United States Agency for International Development and Wellcome Trust, from October 19-21 in Beijing.

The meeting comes as MOST and the foundation continue to advance their partnership since the two sides signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in 2011.

The year of 2015 marks the beginning of the second decade of Grand Challenges worldwide. The program has proven to be successful in driving innovations for global health and development priorities.

Over the past years, the Grand Challenge has proven to be a successful model in catalyzing and driving innovations for global health and development priorities. To date, the Grand Challenges family of initiatives have invested $1 billion in over 2000 projects across more than 80 countries, including 23 projects from China.

Themed as “Innovating to drive development; collaborating to win challenges”, this year’s gathering would attract about 800 researchers, scientists, as well as high-level representatives from governments and organizations across the globe.

The meeting consists of scientific tracks, plenary sessions, roundtables, poster sessions etc. In addition, this year’s meeting will feature China Innovation Sessions to highlight the country’s rising capacity for greater scientific discoveries and breakthroughs. In the meantime, 50 young Chinese innovators will receive awards as “Grand Challenges 2015 Young Scientists”, in recognition of their commitment and contribution in global health and development through innovation.

The conference is held in China for the first time. 2015 marks the inaugural year of China’s reform of science and technology funding and management. China’s Minister of Science and Technology, Wan Gang, attaches great importance to the meeting, underscoring that: “China has been playing an increasingly important role in global agendas through leveraging its technological advances and innovations. As its capacity grows and reform deepens, China has the potential to address the common challenges facing the developing countries and to embark on an innovation path with Chinese characteristics that would meet health and development needs by effectively mobilizing resources and optimizing the allocation of resources.”

Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, CEO of the foundation said, “We see strong synergy between the vision of Grand Challenges and China’s national strategy on innovation, and hope that the Grand Challenges model can serve as an effective platform to drive broad partnerships in China to generate and scale up substantial benefits to people not only in China but also other developing regions.”

The success of the meeting would mark yet another major advancement of the foundation and MOST in collaboration to leverage China’s capacity in scientific innovation to benefit the world. Both parties re-affirmed their commitment to continued support for innovative research and development of new products for global health and development, to celebrate the power of innovation, and to inspire more resources to support national and global development agendas.