Climate Resilient Communities, a Packard Foundation grantee partner, works with residents across San Mateo and Santa Clara counties to design community-led climate resilience solutions, from rain gardens to home repairs and air purification, that help families prepare for flooding, extreme heat and wildfire smoke. In a church in East Palo Alto, Kamille Lang asked a … Continued
Fòs Feminista, a long-standing Packard Foundation grantee, leads a global alliance of local organizations that delivers comprehensive reproductive health care and ensures access to contraceptives for women and young people across Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. Reproductive healthcare looks different depending on where you live. For some people, it means walking into a … Continued
Edward Chuong, a 2020 Packard Fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder, studies how ancient viral sequences embedded in our genome reactivate in cancer—research made possible by the Fellowship’s flexible funding that allowed him to pursue unexpected scientific directions. When Packard Fellow Edward Chuong was starting college, the first-ever sequence of the human genome was released. … Continued
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation provided $700,000 to support local response to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). These grants moved quickly to experienced international Ebola outbreak response teams in the DRC and to grantee partners already embedded in affected communities. The Ebola crisis in the DRC and Uganda … Continued
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation supports healthy families through grants and mission investments in organizations like Nest Health, which brings contraceptive care, prenatal care, and family-centered primary care directly to children and families through their home-visiting program. In rural Arizona, 29-year-old mother Shana had just had her third baby. Three months postpartum, she wanted … Continued
Every day, our bodies protect us from potential threats. Our skin keeps out pathogens. Mucus traps bacteria. These barriers are essential, but they can also prevent medicine from reaching the places it needs to go. At the University of Colorado Boulder, 2022 Packard Fellow Wyatt Shields and his team are working to address this challenge with microscopic robots that … Continued
The Packard Foundation is supporting organizations that help election officials prepare for and respond to physical, cyber, and operational threats while strengthening the shared infrastructure needed for safe, fair, and trusted elections. In the United States, elections are the main way for citizens to influence their country’s path. They allow people and communities to voice their preferences and provide a critical form of accountability between elected officials and … Continued
The deep ocean is notoriously difficult to study. Collecting data with underwater drones requires immense power, and reaching its depths means navigating crushing pressure and total darkness. Inspired by creatures like jellyfish, sharks, and rays that already navigate the ocean with ease, Nicole Xu, a 2025 Packard Fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder, and her team are building bio-inspired robots to monitor the ocean and track the effects of climate change. These … Continued
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation is pleased to announce the recipients of the Packard Fellows Emergency Relief Fund, a $3.3 million rapid-response initiative created to support Packard Fellows affected by recent shifts in federal research funding. Administered by the Science Philanthropy Alliance, the fund was created to preserve the postdoctoral workforce by providing short-term … Continued
The weeks before a baby arrives can be filled with one long checklist of questions for mothers and caregivers. What doctors do I need to meet with? When do those appointments need to be scheduled? How do I find child care once the baby arrives? And how will I afford it? What will I do if my housing becomes an issue? Or if my baby … Continued