The world is a fighting coronavirus, and everyone is hooked to the data concerning the number of people affected, the available number of hospital beds for potential corona patients, and the degree of the rise of the pandemic. Data, certainly, is playing a crucial role in keeping a track of the situation and helping governments across countries control the ongoing situation.
Most of the pandemic-specific data is being collected and stored from different countries across the globe and is fed to data-powered AI models that can make future predictions about the rate of an expanse of the disease. That’s the degree of relevance of data in the global fight against the COVID pandemic.
University Grants Offer Funds to Data Science Research
Data Science Initiatives, like the WDSI (World Data Science Initiative), and many others in the past, have offered funds to universities and governments to carry out research on the betterment of data science and analytics. The result, in today’s date, is the fast-expanding horizon of ‘data science application’ across industries. Every industry in the world, at the moment, is leveraging data in some form or the other to make greater profits in the market.
WDSI Offering Grants Worth $300 Million to Public & Private Universities
WDSI is a global initiative that has been brought about to develop the next generation of data scientists. We are determined to train and develop university and college students around the world on advanced data science concepts. The target is to prepare a futuristic pool of 250,000 odd professionals trained at advanced concepts of data science & analytics. Under the initiative, the top global faculty in data science will extend their domain expertise to the chosen colleges and universities. Students of these colleges will eventually lead the world into a bright future full of prosperity and advanced technical capabilities.
What Does the WDSI Have For You in Store?
- Engulfing 60 countries across the globe, the said data science initiative has a hugely large reach, geographically.
- Under WDSI, if you get selected as an institution for a university grant, you will get accredited in accordance with the highest standards of data science education.
- The selected institutes/universities will stand out among the rest in terms of the standards of data science education being imparted within their premises. They will earn a global repute in the field of study, pertaining to data science & research.
- A few selected public/private universities will get funded under the initiative, for setting up a Data Science Centers of Excellence within their university campuses. They will be equipped with data science labs that will offer students research opportunities in the field of data science.
Amid COVID disruptions, the registration period has been extended till September 25, 2020.
Transparent Data-Sharing Concerning the Pandemic is Already Helping
Case Study (York University)
Professor Eric Kennedy from York University disaster management division is busy analyzing how Canadians are perceiving the COVID pandemic, whom they trust upon to source information regarding the same, and what way, they have changed their behaviors in the wake of the virus outbreak.
The gained insights under this study will help in developing better strategies to tackle the impact of viruses on people, and businesses.
Case Study (McGill University)
David Buckeridge, a medical informatics expert from the McGill University, along with his team, is working on the merger of NLP technology with ML tools, like neural networks, to facilitate analysis of approximately 2 million orthodox media, and social media reports, on the expanse of COVID across the world.
The obtained information will later be combined with other kinds of data on COVID spread, such as corona case reports, to help govt. health authorities and policymakers, cope with the surge in the contagiousness of the disease. It will offer a world view, in terms of the pattern of the disease-spread across varied geographies, globally.