Grand Challenges is focusing on the ways in which cross-disciplinary research can address the objectives laid out in the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Launched in 2008, UCL Grand Challenges aims to deliver significant contributions to solving some of the world’s greatest problems. The initiative was born of a belief that a large research-intensive university with a global standing can make significant contributions in key areas. Grand Challenges brings together a diverse range of experts from across the UCL community to address these large and complex societal issues.
The Grand Challenges strands – Global Health, Sustainable Cities, Cultural Understanding, Human Wellbeing, Transformative Technology and Justice & Equality – cover the spectrum of globally complex challenges framed by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as identified by the UN in its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, launched in 2015.
Grand Challenges works in tandem with the UCL SDGs Initiative, which seeks to maximise UCL’s impact on the UN’s 2030 Goals through research, internal operations, external engagement and teaching activities, as well as those undertaken by our student and alumni communities.
Grand Challenges plays its part in this by supporting UCL researchers to generate cross-disciplinary responses to the goals. It does so through developing partnerships both within and beyond the university, funding projects based on grass roots ideas, organising events, and by motivating, organising and delivering special initiatives that relate to the SDGs and their interconnections.
By aligning its work with the SDGs, Grand Challenges is facilitating impactful new partnerships – within the university and beyond – that are both intellectually stimulating for researchers and of clear and immediate value to society. Since its inception, the inter-faculty collaborations and external links fostered by the programme have inspired new research approaches and the practical translation of research outputs. By complementing the UCL SDGs Initiative, Grand Challenges will continue to grow and develop UCL’s capacity to tackle and offer solutions to globally significant problems - and help to ensure that action on the Goals is addressed across a range of spatial scales – at city, regional, national and international levels.
What we’ve done so far
For more on how Grand Challenges projects are supporting the SDGs, visit our case studies page.
Find out more about UCL's Sustainable Development Goals Initiative.