Higher Education and the SDGs Challenge Grantees

University of South Africa

Prof Malik Maaza, University of South Africa, is a joint staff member of the University of South Africa and iThemba LABS-National Research Foundation of South Africa and the current incumbent of the UNESCO Africa Nano-Chair. Malik's expertise lies within the multidisciplinary fields of Nano-sciences and Nanotechnologies.

His Higher Education and the SDG’s Challenge Grant will assist in implementing various SDGs and advancing them through quality education and local nano-solutions to Africa societal priorities in line with STISA 2063 vision of the African Union.

Fiji National University

Dr Ravita Prasad, Assistant Professor at Fiji National University (FNU), specialises in long-term energy planning for low carbon development of energy systems. 

Her grant will be used to conduct a survey for a research project titled ‘A comparative analysis in the energy consumption of different clusters of selected Fijian Schools’. 

It will assess energy consumption, recommend energy-saving and clean energy options for selected Fijian schools, and build and strengthen FNU's partnership with key stakeholders in the education system.

Athabasca University

Dr Eduardo Ordonez-Ponce, Assistant Professor at Athabasca University Faculty of Business, Canada specializes in sustainability partnerships, multinationals impact in developing countries, social responsibility, the SDGs, B Corps, boards, and sustainability.

Eduardo applied for the Challenge Grant in collaboration with Dr Mehran Nejati from Edith Cowan University, Australia to assess how business schools integrate sustainability into their teaching and research agendas.

This project aims to contribute to the development and improvement of HEIs’ sustainability teaching and research agendas.

BRAC University

Dr Sang Hoon Lee is Dean and Professor of Finance at BRAC Business School (BBS), Dhaka, Bangladesh. Sang’s grant application is an initiative of the Research & Professional Development Center (RPDC) of BBS.

This research will be targeted at financial literacy and gender-based disparities in access to finance among entrepreneurs in Bangladesh to make recommendations to policy makers through research talks. It is considered as a high impact research for BRAC University both in societal and policy fronts to improve women's economic empowerment.

University of Strathclyde

Dr Scott M Strachan is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Strathclyde. He is Co-Director of the Vertically Integrated Projects for Sustainable Development programme and is education co-lead in the University’s Centre for Sustainable Development.

This ACU grant brings together three international VIP sites – Strathclyde, Georgia Tech and Strathmore – to create a toolkit for embedding inquiry-based education for sustainable development in curricula, and will provide users with a template for advancing SDG4 at their institutions and beyond.