Grand Challenges News & Information

ORED is seeking volunteers to serve as reviewers of Grand Challenges planning grant proposals. Reviewers are needed from every discipline at the university.

A virtual Town Hall meeting at 11 a.m.-noon on Feb. 15 offers a forum to ask questions about the request for proposals and will provide details about the Notice of Intent to Submit due Feb. 28.

After decades of work, many researchers believe climate change poses the greatest global threat to human health — and that youth are the most vulnerable to the impacts and most-dire consequences, both today and in the future.

University of Nebraska–Lincoln students and researchers are working to bring new life to a Cold War relic in Nebraska.

Researchers looking for secrets to success in the Grand Challenges Catalyst Competition received helpful advice during a Nov. 14 discussion panel featuring four Husker faculty from three winning teams in the contest’s first cycle.

Sarah Zuckerman and her team are using a Grand Challenges Catalyst Competition planning grant to lead a project that leverages collaboration among researchers, practitioners and community members to reduce educational and health inequities in Nebraska.

With funding from a $3.21 million UNL Grand Challenges Catalyst Award, a Nebraska researcher is co-leading a four-year project to establish an Indigenous-led sexual violence prevention center on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Nebraska research team is developing augmented reality experiences to explain quantum mechanics.

Digital twins are simulatable replicas of real-world systems and have been employed by many industries that work with complex data, such as manufacturing, but never for any of the intricate systems of the human body.

Thomas Helikar, associate professor of biochemistry, aims to change that, and has earned a Grand Challenges Catalyst award for his ongoing work to build out a digital twin of the human immune system.

ORED is hosting September events to kick off the second year of the Grand Challenges initiative and help the university community begin planning for the next cycle of the Grand Challenges Catalyst Competition.

Innovative research proposals aimed at preventing sexual violence among indigenous youth, replicating the human immune system and exploring quantum phenomena have earned funding through the first Grand Challenges Catalyst competition.

Although Native American women and girls experience disproportionally high rates of sex trafficking, little is known about the impact that sex trafficking has specifically on Native survivors — or what Native survivors need to heal and achieve safety and justice. Researchers in three states, including Nebraska, are using two Department of Justice grants to examine the impacts of sex trafficking on Native American survivors and communities.