An article in today’s Wall Street Journal describes a novel funding scheme implemented by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

From WSJ:
The Gates foundation, the world’s largest private philanthropy, said Wednesday that it will grant 104 scientists and experimenters in 222 countries $100,000 each for research into areas that include how to prevent or cure HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. The $100 million earmarked for the program will be distributed over five years.

Two page grant applications for Grand Challenges Explorations were submitted online and reviewed by a panel of experts in the Gates foundation and beyond. The reviewers were not informed of the applicants identity – a key step in funding young researchers with new and promising ideas. The relatively small grants were awarded to proposals with “offbeat or novel approaches to problems” in hopes of promoting cutting edge and inventive research which may have otherwise been overlooked by tradition funding bodies. These include “using mosquitoes as ‘flying syringes’ to vaccinate people” and “‘a stealth weapon’ for destroying HIV.”

A complete list of funded projects is available here

What do you think? Is this venture capital-like approach to research funding the wave of the future for HIV? Have you heard of any new approaches to HIV research that would be good candidates for this set of grants?