Seattle’s role as a capital for global health was highlighted again this week when the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a historic grant to a key University of Washington population health effort. We’re also rounding up a handful of recent early-stage funding rounds for area companies pursuing cow-sharing, healthcare IT, and water metering. And, check out the new Techstars Seattle cohort, a new partner at Voyager Capital, recognition for Modumetal, an armored vehicles deal for Kymeta, and the new world of alternative credentials in tech education.
—The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will contribute $279 million over the next decade to the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), a unit of UW Medicine that gathers independent data in support of population health initiatives. The grant, which the UW says is the largest private donation it has ever received, is one of more than 250 from the Gates Foundation to the UW, totaling some $1.25 billion.
The IHME is a key part of the UW’s broader focus on population health. Its 300 faculty and staff members carry out research including an annual assessment of some 300 major diseases around the world, known as the Global Burden of Disease study. Its data is used by major international health and development groups such as The World Bank and U.S. Agency for International Development.
—Cow-sharing startup Crowd Cow raised $2 million in a seed funding round led by Fuel Capital, with participation by Maveron and individual investors, including Zulily founders Mark Vadon and Darrell Cavens, and Joe Montana. The Seattle company allows consumers to buy beef directly from ranchers in smaller increments than are typically available in the direct-sales model. The company, founded last year by serial entrepreneurs Joe Heitzeberg and Ethan Lowry, was recently featured in The New York Times.
—KenSci, which is applying machine learning models to healthcare data to predict things like which individuals are at highest risk for hospital infection, announced an $8.5 million funding round on Wednesday led by Ignition Partners. Here’s our coverage.
—Another healthcare IT deal Xconomy covered this week: Redox, which helps unlock data in electronic health records systems, raised $9…