The Office of Foundations Relations is pleased to share this open call for funding from MIT Solve.
- UCSC Contact: Samantha Forde | forde@ucsc.edu
- Funder: MIT Solve
- Program: Future Health Challenge: Building Anticipatory Health Systems through Population Sensing
- Deadline: February 23, 2026, 9pm PT
- Register for the Application Clinic on February 17, 2026 at 7am PT here.
Overview:
The Future Health Challenge seeks solutions that accelerate the shift from reactive healthcare delivery to anticipatory models of care, improving resilience and outcomes at scale. The Challenge aims to fund innovative approaches to population sensing that strengthen the link between information and prediction, enabling earlier and more effective intervention and predictive health care.
Specific areas of interest include:
- Improving population risk forecasting by using digital and data-driven approaches to capture early signals from communities, environments, and frontline health systems;
- Strengthening technology-enabled disease surveillance and early warning systems, improving the prediction of infectious disease outbreaks, non-communicable disease trends, and emerging health threats;
- Developing low-tech, proxy, and community-based data solutions, including digitally supported methods that enable sensing and prediction in fragile or underserved settings;
- Enabling AI-powered decision support for public health and primary care, transforming fragmented and heterogeneous data into interpretable, forward-looking forecasts that support action.
Please find a list of FAQs here.
Eligibility:
Solutions can be for-profit, non-profit, or hybrid models; must be enabled by technology; and must be at least at the prototype stage.
Funding:
One $200,000 grand prize and two runner-up prizes of $50,000 each
Timeline
- February 17, 2026 7am PT Application Clinic
- February 23, 2026 9pm PT Application Deadline
- February 24, 2026 6am PT – March 11, 2026 2pm PT Screening & Reviews
- March 13, 2026 9pm PT Semifinalists Notified
- April 7, 2026 6am PT Finalists Selected at the Abu Dhabi Future Health Summit
- April 8, 2026 6am PT Winner Announcement at the Abu Dhabi Future Health Summit
Special Instructions
Please notify the Office of Foundation Relations if you are interested in applying to this opportunity (fr@ucsc.edu). Please submit a proposal intake form prior to UCSC’s internal Institutional Deadlines. For support developing your proposal, please contact the Research Development Specialist, or send a request to resdev@ucsc.edu. Within the Division of Social Sciences, please contact Ashlee Tews (ashleeac@ucsc.edu).
Call sent: February 3, 2026
The Office of Foundation Relations is a unit of University Advancement. The FR team creates and maintains mutually beneficial, long-term relationships with private organizations, matching grant initiatives with educational and research programs and centers. FR supports faculty and staff to identify and approach these and other private foundations for funding, to assist in strategic positioning of the grant application, and to facilitate funder campus visits. For a list of recent funding opportunities, please visit the FR website: FR Calls for Funding.