“Emerging technology programs across the federal government have come together under the common goal of fighting the spread of the coronavirus.”
“While agencies have spent a considerable amount of time fielding artificial intelligence for projects much less ambitious than a global pandemic, AI and other tools such as supercomputing and advanced data analytics will play a significant, if not understated role, in the Trump administration’s long-term response to COVID-19, the disease caused by this strain of the virus.”
“William Scherlis, the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Information Innovation Office, said DARPA’s work in artificial intelligence is ‘actively supporting the current response to the novel coronavirus…’”White House leverages federal supercomputers
“Meanwhile, the Trump administration also sees supercomputers having a supporting role in mitigating the coronavirus pandemic.”
“The White House on Sunday launched COVID-19 High-Performance Computing Consortium to give coronavirus researchers access to the world’s most powerful supercomputers ‘that can significantly advance the pace of scientific discovery in the fight to stop the virus.’”
“The consortium brings together 16 systems that collectively offer 330 petaflops of supercomputing capacity that can process huge numbers of calculations to aid epidemiologists…”
“The consortium features leadership from NASA, the Energy Department’s national labs and the National Science Foundation, as well as private-sector partners like IBM, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft…”Data Coalition seeks ‘robust data infrastructure’
“Meanwhile, the Data Coalition has called on Congress, as it negotiates a $2 trillion coronavirus spending bill, to set aside at least $50 million this year and $125 million in fiscal 2021 to support the rollout of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act…”
“The coalition’s other recommendations include standing up a National Secure Data Service, one of the recommendations from the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking that didn’t make its way into the Evidence Act…”
“The coalition has also called on Congress to set aside $20 million to improve the federal government’s system for compiling COVID-19 test data and other relevant health data…” Read the full article here.
Source: Emerging tech offices come together on long-term plan to combat coronavirus – By Jory Heckman, March 25, 2020. Federal News Network.
