Posts By: Summer Students

How do we know when we’ve solved a Grand Challenge?

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When Dr. Singer prompted the Grand Challenges Canada team to ponder what it would look like when a Grand Challenge had been solved, he might as well have been asking: when can we close a program and move on to address other grand challenges in global health? It was in this moment that I realized that Grand Challenges Canada is moving in the right direction towards the denouement of international development as an industry.

Counting the ‘Stars’ of Global Health

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Research should not be conducted for the mere sake of conducting research. This is the beauty of the Stars program – it is like no other Canadian global health initiative, in that it supports innovator-defined projects driven by entrepreneurs in Canada and low- and middle-income countries (LMIC).

‘Scaling’ Up My Learning Curve

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Working with my supervisor, Raymond Shih, and the rest of the Financial Innovations team at Grand Challenges Canada, I was able to gain insight about and appreciate the difficulty of evaluating the financial viability and scalability of global health investments.

On being Tweet-smart and what it takes

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Linking to trending hashtags, veering away academic jargon to a conversational tone (while maintaining a sense of gravitas), and sometimes, simply reading a tweet aloud to think about how it ‘sounds’, are tools that help keeping content from sounding dull.

Reflections on a Routine Cheque Run

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The privilege I feel to be contributing to Grand Challenges Canada is not fleeting: it is felt as I write this blog, chat with the dynamo students with whom I share desk space, and sit with Melanie while she translates high-level strategic objectives into financial objectives.