We have been experiencing a once-in-a-hundred years global pandemic, which includes had a profound effect on most of humankind. Even those who have not really been infected have observed unprecedented disruptions with their everyday life, with overburdened health techniques, business shutdowns resulting in job losses, and foods shortages, amongst others. This pandemic is really a clear wake-up contact, reminding us in order to prepare yourself as a society to cope with these challenges better.

Connecting experts and developers

This year earlier, at Cisco Research, we wished to step upward to the task of pandemic preparedness by soliciting study proposals that deal with both science and technology areas of problems around recognition, mitigation, and evaluation of COVID-19. Cisco Research is area of the Emerging Technology & Incubation (ET&I) group from Cisco, and contains had an extended tradition of connecting programmers and scientists from Cisco, academia, governments, clients, and industry partners. Our objective is usually facilitating exploration and collaboration of brand new and promising technology with strong societal, technological, and business influence.

Saving lives

With regards to COVID-19, on the technology front, there’s an incredibly wide variety of opportunities for mitigating the impact of the condition, from predictive analytics, to innovative life-conserving devices, to rapid disease-detecting technology. The potential social and economic impacts are huge plus some of the ongoing work could be transformative and save lives.

US$1 million in research money awarded

We posted our obtain proposal (RFP) within June 2020, generating the biggest number of proposals we’ve received ever, with an array of suggestions to solve this crisis. Out of the submissions, we chosen 14 proposals and awarded a complete of All of us$1 million in analysis funds to different universities and nonprofits all over the world. As principal RFP and engineer co-writer Amit Kumar Saha from Cisco Bangalore notes, “We had been humbled by the response we got really. We have been delighted to announce that people funded a true amount of very exciting study proposals, most of them concentrating on subjects for expediting a remedy or knowing the socio-economic impact of the pandemic. Collectively, these proposals give us wish that the global globe will come using this stronger and better.”

Research topics

The selected proposals target research in an array of technology areas, including:

• Near infrared nano-sensors for rapid recognition of positive situations
• Expanding usage of video technology to boost mid-level healthcare providers’ infection control administration in rural/urban healthcare settings
• Enhanced transmission recognition for amplification-totally free recognition of COVID-19 infection,
• Analyzing the socio-economic areas of COVID-19 in the particular developing world
• Novel methods for tests, prediction, and intervention of COVID-19

By financing these scholarly research and cultivating solid partnerships between scientists, technologists, and the broader neighborhood, our wish is that people can accelerate analysis outcomes, improve how technologies shapes our reaction to pandemics, and assist break the panic-then-forget routine in order to create a resilient post-COVID world.

Dr. Tutan Ahmed, from the Indian Institute of Technologies (IIT), Kharagpur, had been awarded Cisco Research money to investigate how COVID disrupted the work market. He declares, “Covid has supplied a uncommon opportunity of an all natural experiment setting to comprehend the structure, design and the worthiness of informal labor marketplace networks. However, large-scale major data collection is costly and time-eating. The generous grant supplied by Cisco we can do a large-scale study of the migrants and non-migrants in West Bengal, India, and research the structure consequently, pattern, and worth of the informal migrant work market.”

We anticipate outcomes from a few of the extensive research projects as soon as the summertime of 2021, and appearance to sharing a few of these successes in another blog forward.

Our research financing is only section of Cisco’s broad reaction to COVID-19 within 2020. We have caused customers closely, suppliers, and partners to guarantee the products are experienced by them, solutions, and resources to use in virtual environments around the world effectively. And we have backed communities by donating US$53 million in cash and personal safety equipment to companies supporting people most susceptible to medical and economic ramifications of the pandemic.

It is possible to read more about our overall reaction to the pandemic inside our latest CSR Impact Report, starting on web page 14.