Within the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Grand Challenges program strives to find solutions to prevalent global health issues by funding smaller exploratory research projects. However, due to a lack of information provided by grantees, it is difficult for the foundation to measure their impact. Our solution brings the vastness of the web into an organized, searchable portal that will allow users find and filter news articles related specifically to projects funded by the foundation. With stories and evidence of the value of these smaller grants, the Grand Challenges program will continue to receive funding and solve important global health issues.

Home chefs provide a valuable marketplace for different cuisines in local communities. Consumers are interested in new varieties when deciding on their next meal. Grandma’s House provides a platform for these two communities to meet. Home chefs share their love of cooking, decide their own work hours, and benefit from additional income. Consumers get to experience new cuisines prepared by their local neighbors. Grandma’s House fosters a greater sense of community, because when it comes to food, love is the most important ingredient.

Our project address the problem of the communication of material from scientists to the general public about information that impacts their lives. Working with Grey Matters, a neuroscience journal, our solution is the development of an phone application that hosts informational content about neuroscience, and a dashboard to easily upload content to the app. With this application and dashboard, information about neuroscience will be accessible to a wider audience and increase the knowledge and understanding of the field to the general public. It will also extend the reach and influence of scientists through the content Grey Matters produces.

We are always hearing about data breaches and leaks from websites we visit on a daily basis. Hack This is an easy to use web extension for your internet browser to make surfing the web more secure. With Hack This, you can check to see whether or not your favorite websites have open vulnerabilities, hidden elements on the page, and can run scripts to pentest the site you’re visiting.

Seeking online help shouldn’t be a chore. Websites like Yahoo Answers are antiquated, and even the modern apps that people turn to don’t provide adequate resources for seeking or providing help. Text alone isn’t sufficient to communicate problems. HALP solves this by allowing users to visually communicate the problem. Users can snap a photo from their phones, edit it in-app, and directly upload it to the topic board. Other users can share their expertise by providing photos of their own.

At large events, trying to describe a booth location to someone is frustrating and tiring. THERE is our solution - an indoor wayfinding mobile and desktop application for event attendees and planners respectively. THERE easily gets attendees from point A to point B so they can fully enjoy their experience without worrying about getting lost at large events. Creating booth locations online makes event planning simple. Building on HERE Technologies, we navigate complicated indoor spaces for you - to help you get from HERE to THERE.

Hidden Gem is a resource for people looking to discover new places and activities in the Pacific Northwest. Instead of having the same list of 'touristy' activities pop up from the current databases, people can view and contribute to a growing list of unique and interesting experiences. Our resource will allow users to continuously awe themselves and create a closer connection between them and their city. Hidden Gem brings the lesser-known places to life and provides people with the information they need to plan their next adventure.

Libraries must mitigate chronic funding issues through fundraising. At the same time support from stakeholders has become more important, requiring more-effective friendraising. These needs led the Association of Research Libraries to award an ARL SPEC Kit on Library Development to document support (personnel, funding and other resources) for library development, and the work methods, efforts and assessment types for development at major libraries. The national data collection and analysis will culminate in an ARL-published Open Access monograph, and an ARL-hosted webinar. The unique data set and findings support leaders in benchmarking fundraising and friendraising capacity, and in assessing library development.

Springfield Public Library (OR) is in need of a new website that is both optimized for modern technology and accessible for disabled users. This project involved a user needs assessment survey to identify changes the community wants to make as well as a comparison of potential website platforms the library could use. This project serves as the foundation to the library's process of designing a new website, and it began the process of making the library's website more accessible and user-friendly.