We are thrilled to introduce the newest additions to the Seeding Labs community: the Instrumental Access 2018 awardees! You can meet them here. 

Here are a few facts about the 2018 group...

There are 14 new awardees from 10 countries.

While the majority of the 2018 awardees are located in sub-Saharan Africa, we also have representation from South Asia (India) and Latin America (Peru). The group includes a university in a country new to Instrumental Access: Benin.

More than 15,000 students per year will benefit from this year’s Instrumental Access shipments.

Instrumental Access equipment will impact an estimated 14,900 undergraduate students and 1,200 graduate students each year—providing crucial hands-on educational opportunities.

Hundreds of scientists will  gain access to the equipment they need to transform lives and fuel development.

Equipment will be available to 300 faculty members in the awarded departments alone, as well as many others from across these universities and beyond.

All of our awardees are using their scientific expertise to search for solutions to the problems that matter most to their communities and the world.

Here are a few examples:

• Developing affordable quick-dissolving antimalarials to make treatment of children more effective and save lives in Ghana
• Using stem cells to grow new teeth and bones for dental patients who have suffered from disease or trauma in India 
• Tracking sources of contamination to make drinking water safer in Tanzania 
• Developing new imaging technologies to help surgeons treat a devastating birth defect in Peru 
• Transforming agricultural waste into animal feed in order to improve nutrition in Nigeria 

Learn about these projects and more on our Instrumental Access 2018 page, or meet some of them in this video!

Awardees were announced at our Positively Instrumental event, where we celebrated our 10th anniversary.

We were pleased to host Professor Maxime da Cruz, Rector of the Université d'Abomey-Calavi in Benin; Professor Kabiru Adeyemo, Vice Chancellor of Lead City University in Nigeria; Professor Allen Malisa, Principal of the  Solomon Mahlangu College of Science and Education at Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania; and Professor Joseph Ampiah, Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast in Ghana.

We were also joined by scientists from 11 of the 2018 Instrumental Access awardee universities and 3 past awardees.