Merge Grants Q4 2024
Here's what Merge Grantees have been up the past 3mo
Hey everybody!
In Q4 of 2024, we kept busy on our mission to give ambitious builders the resources they need as they pursue compelling projects. We gave Merge Grants to people across 4 continents over the past three months.
Today we’re excited to highlight those who’ve received a grant in Q4:
Sam, lowering the barrier for accessing essential medication in Kenya
Aarav, developing brain-controlled prosthetics to help people regain mobility
Brian, upgrading Kenyan energy security with autonomous drone-based inspection of power line infrastructure
Jackson, building low-cost micro weather stations for improved wildfire weather prediction
Ryan, creating a 6-axis robotic arm to help those with degenerative disabilities with fine motor tasks
And four exciting updates from grantees:
Jackson is a PhD drop-out with a background in cloud atmospherics and wildfire research. He’s been bravely supporting on-the-ground efforts in LA during the wildfire crisis — from volunteering at emergency shelters to installing detection sensors. He and the Torch Sensors team were even covered by NBC!
Richa (Q3), whose tongue-controlled communication device for people with severe motor disorders has made significant progress: she's achieved a working intraoral interface and is now integrating AR display capabilities into Brilliant Labs Frame smart glasses, upgrading from her initial heads-up display prototype
Hector (Q3), deployed Gaia, a no-code platform to train and deploy machine translation models for endangered languages. He virtually eliminated training time and reduced computing power, outperforming Meta’s NLLB-200. He received a follow-on grant from Tyler Cowen at Emergent Ventures and was accepted to the Magnificent Fellowship. Gaia has been used by students, professors, and researchers from three Peruvian universities who deployed translation agents for 7 languages without existing translation technology.
Aaryan (Q3), building PhageBase, the world’s largest database of phages, is seeing steady growth. Some influential researchers have begun contributing to the database and he’s expanding it to include genetic information, protein predictions, and more. He also recently discovered 3 new phages active against multi-drug resistant lung infections! You can read a great write-up on that here.
(Listen to our podcast with Aaryan on Spotify/YouTube.)
We’re extremely excited to see where these talented builders’ projects will go and look forward to documenting their progress via the podcast and Twitter.
We’ve already given out our first grant of 2025 — if you’d like to be the second (or you know someone who would), learn more and apply for a Merge Grant here. To discover 30+ other microgrants and fellowships, check out the Microgrant Guide.
Until next time,
Ari, Julian, Kai and the Merge Club community
Follow along for the journey on YouTube/Twitter/Apple Podcasts.
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