Tag: AWS Cloud Innovation Center

The 12th annual Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent conference debuted Innovation Talks—deep dives hosted by AWS thought leaders. Dave Levy, vice president of AWS worldwide public sector, delivered his talk, “Empowering citizens through digital innovation,” on Monday, November 27. Read this blog post to learn more about some of the public sector organizations using the AWS Cloud to improve people’s lives and the world.

On the journey of finding answers and solutions to address global sustainability challenges, universities are integral in delivering ground-breaking knowledge and scientific advancements. Collaborating with industry can in turn accelerate innovation through to practical implementation. Arizona State University (ASU) and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have been effective in joining forces to drive innovation and impact through the creation of ASU’s Smart City Cloud Innovation Center (CIC).

Deloitte’s Smart Factory Believers program was established as The Smart Factory @ Wichita’s purpose mission and is a collaborative initiative that brings together world-leading organizations, including AWS, Elenco Electronics, the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI), and others, to help foster new learning opportunities for middle school-aged children in underserved communities. Today, Deloitte and AWS announced an expansion of the program to the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). Within the next three years, Smart Factory Believers aims to impact more than 1,600 students in the DC metro area.

The Busan Cloud Innovation Center (CIC) teamed up with the World Food Programme (WFP), the Busan IT Promotion Agency, and technology startup Nuvilab to use cloud technology to address food waste in South Korea. Using Amazon’s “Working Backwards” approach with artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and data lake solutions on AWS, the team developed Zero Waste Zero Hunger (ZWZH), a program that uses artificial intelligence AI to provide data about food consumption.

Amazon’s Working Backwards process puts the customer at the center of discussions about designing a solution based on their needs. The City of Bellevue, Washington recently benefited from this practice through a workshop facilitated by the Arizona State University (ASU) Smart City Cloud Innovation Center (CIC), powered by AWS. The CIC workshop provided clarity on Bellevue’s local road safety needs and how to best align its projects with national investment priorities.

Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB), also known as the Western Launch and Test Range, is one of only two U.S. Space Force launch ranges. A safe rocket launch relies on the ability of Western Range meteorologists to gather and analyze weather data in real-time. The Western Range team wanted to switch to an agile, cloud-based solution that would streamline data analysis and keep operators safe—which prompted them to call on students and AWS Cloud experts at the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) Digital Transformation Hub (DxHub), powered by AWS, to help VSFB prototype a solution.

How do we avoid the next global pandemic? For researchers collaborating with the University of British Columbia Cloud Innovation Center (UBC CIC), the answer to that question lies in a massive library of genetic sequencing data. But there is a problem: the data library is so massive that traditional computing can’t comprehensively analyze or process it. So the UBC CIC team collaborated with computational virologists to create Serratus, an open-science viral discovery platform to transform the field of genomics—built on the massive computational power of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud.

The UC Davis Health Cloud Innovation Center (CIC) will focus on digital health equity and will use Amazon’s Working Backwards principles and methodologies to improve health outcomes and reduce health disparities. The CIC will allow clinicians or clinical care providers, patients, and developers to exchange ideas, as well as prototype and validate open-source solutions focused on making digital health more equitable and accessible worldwide. Among the 13 AWS CICs globally, this will be the first CIC based at an academic medical center.

With Amazon Web Services (AWS), education technology (EdTech) companies and universities are transforming the video learning experience for students and families.

Cloud Innovation Centers (CICs) powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) aim to empower public sector organizations to quickly create and test new ideas using Amazon’s innovation methodology. In the second half of 2020, all those who participate in the CIC program, from students and researchers to the technology teams from AWS, worked on wide-ranging societal problems. Their focus was on improving education with virtual computer labs, working on climate change initiatives, improving economic and healthcare research, and supporting at-risk high school students. What were they up to at the end of 2020?