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We’re experiencing a once-in-a-century international pandemic, which has had a profound impression on all of humankind. Even individuals who haven’t been contaminated have seen unprecedented disruptions to their on a regular basis lives, with overburdened well being methods, enterprise shutdowns resulting in job losses, and meals shortages, amongst others. This pandemic is a transparent wake-up name, reminding us to be higher ready as a society to take care of these challenges.
Connecting researchers and builders
Earlier this 12 months, at Cisco Analysis, we needed to step as much as the problem of pandemic preparedness by soliciting analysis proposals that tackle each the science and expertise elements of issues round detection, mitigation, and evaluation of COVID-19. Cisco Analysis is a part of the Rising Applied sciences & Incubation (ET&I) group at Cisco, and has had an extended custom of connecting researchers and builders from Cisco, academia, governments, prospects, and business companions. Our aim is facilitating collaboration and exploration of recent and promising applied sciences with robust societal, technological, and enterprise impression.
Saving lives
In relation to COVID-19, on the expertise entrance, there’s an extremely big selection of alternatives for mitigating the impression of the illness, from predictive analytics, to progressive life-saving gadgets, to fast disease-detecting expertise. The potential social and financial impacts are big and a number of the work will be transformative and save lives.
US$1 million in analysis funds awarded
We posted our request for proposal (RFP) in June 2020, producing the most important variety of proposals we have now ever obtained, with a variety of concepts to unravel this disaster. Out of those submissions, we chosen 14 proposals and awarded a complete of US$1 million in analysis funds to varied universities and nonprofits around the globe. As principal engineer and RFP co-author Amit Kumar Saha from Cisco Bangalore notes, “We have been actually humbled by the response we received. We’re delighted to announce that we funded plenty of very thrilling analysis proposals, most of them specializing in subjects for expediting a treatment or understanding the socio-economic impression of this pandemic. Collectively, these proposals give us hope that the world will come out of this stronger and higher.”
Analysis subjects
The chosen proposals goal analysis in a variety of expertise areas, together with:
- Close to infrared nano-sensors for fast detection of optimistic circumstances
- Increasing use of video expertise to enhance mid-level well being care suppliers’ an infection management administration in rural/city well being care settings
- Enhanced sign recognition for amplification-free detection of COVID-19 an infection
- Analyzing the socio-economic elements of COVID-19 within the creating world
- Novel strategies for testing, prediction, and intervention of COVID-19
By funding these research and cultivating robust partnerships between scientists, technologists, and the broader neighborhood, our hope is that we will speed up analysis outcomes, enhance how expertise shapes our response to pandemics, and assist break the panic-then-forget cycle with the intention to construct a resilient post-COVID world.
Dr. Tutan Ahmed, from the Indian Institute of Know-how (IIT), Kharagpur, was awarded Cisco Analysis funds to research how COVID disrupted the labor market. He states, “Covid has supplied a uncommon alternative of a pure experiment setting to know the construction, sample and the worth of casual labor market networks. Nonetheless, large-scale main knowledge assortment is dear and time-consuming. The beneficiant grant supplied by Cisco permits us to do a large-scale survey of the migrants and non-migrants in West Bengal, India, and consequently examine the construction, sample, and worth of the casual migrant labor market.”
We anticipate outcomes from a number of the analysis initiatives as early because the summer season of 2021, and look ahead to sharing a few of these successes in a future weblog.
Our analysis funding is just a part of Cisco’s broad response to COVID-19 in 2020. We have now labored carefully with prospects, suppliers, and companions to make sure they’ve the merchandise, options, and assets to function successfully in digital environments throughout the globe. And we have now supported communities by donating US$53 million in money and private protecting tools to organizations supporting individuals most weak to the well being and financial results of the pandemic.
You possibly can learn extra about our total response to the pandemic in our newest CSR Impression Report, beginning on web page 14.