The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said it would hand out 104 grants of $100,000 each to scientists and researchers in 22 countries. The theme was “bold, untested” ideas to improve global health and the 104 were selected from 4000 applications which were twice as many as initially planned.

Dr. Tachi Yamada, president of global health at the Gates Foundation was to announce the first round of its Grand Challenges Explorations grants at a global health meeting in Bangkok.

Yamada said, “The quality of the applications exceeded all of our expectations. It was so hard for reviewers to champion just one great idea that we selected almost twice as many projects for funding as we had initially planned.”

The new program is expected to last five years with the grants going to researchers in 25 U.S. states, with a bulk of the awards to five scientists at the University of Washington. Ideas for the second round of grants are due at the foundation's Web site by Nov. 2.

Melissa Derry, a Gates Foundation program officer for global health policy and advocacy said the projects that show promise after the first year of research will receive bigger grants of $ 1 million or more. "We're making lots of small bets," Derry said. "We'll narrow it down in the next phase."

Derry said the foundation was happy with the response it received and particularly so that 15 % of the grant applications came from countries other than the United States. "You have to look under every rock," she said. "You have to make sure you look in every place imaginable to find new ideas."

Tayyaba Hasan, a research professor at Harvard University who was born in India, said most of her 25-year career has focused on cancer research but she would like to use her knowledge and ideas to also help people in poorer parts of the world.

"Most people will agree that there's a need for some sense of adventure in science," she said. Hasan’s idea is to apply new technology, photodynamic therapy in a newer way in which a light source such as a laser is used to activate a chemical compound to kill diseased cells.

Currently this therapy is being used to treat blindness and several kinds of cancer and Hasan thinks it may also work for fighting visceral leishmaniasis or black fever, a little-known disease that causes about 500,000 deaths a year.