My name is Ken Simiyu, a Program Officer at Grand Challenges Canada which is funded by the Government of Canada.

I would like to take this opportunity to let you know of Round 5 of our Stars program, which is a funding opportunity that may interest your colleagues. Applicants apply for $100,000 seed grants which can later be scaled with a grant of up to $ 1,000,000.

In Round 3 of our program we received about 300 applications from all over the world and selected 68. Round 4 results will be released in January but we anticipate awarding between 70-100 grants out of the 450 that applied.

The deadline for application for Round 5 is February 6, 2013.

The application process is extremely simple. It consists of a two-page concept with a two-minute video.

An example of funded projects can be found at http://www.grandchallenges.ca/stars-r3-grantee-announcement-en/

Potential applicants could come from Universities departments of engineering, law, agriculture and veterinary sciences, food science and nutrition, medicine, pharmacy, nursing, public health, business schools, computer science, arts and science, education, anthropology, sociology.

More details on this program and Grand Challenges Canada can be found at http://www.grandchallenges.ca/grand-challenges/gc1-stars/stars-program-information/

We would appreciate if you could disseminate this information.

Thanks
Ken