Tag: aws lambda

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, nonprofit organization PhysioQ launched a COVID-19 early-detection platform for families. Jordan Masys, co-founder of PhysioQ, describes how AWS allows PhysioQ to create and to scale a platform that not only helps detect signs of COVID-19 early, but also accelerates scientific research.

Tuesday, September 22, 2020 is National Voter Registration Day, a nonpartisan civic holiday in the United States celebrating democracy with a mission to create broad awareness of registration opportunities for voters. Learn how nonprofit civic organizations use the cloud to meet their mission in a secure, scalable, and cost-effective way on National Voter Registration Day and throughout the election cycle.

T-Digital, a division of Tshwane University Technology Enterprise Holding (TUTEH) in South Africa, built TRes, a digital platform for students living in student housing and for accommodation providers. TRes connects students with available housing and verified and authorized property owners. It addresses student accommodation needs and helps verified and approved property owners fully allocate their residences, while alleviating administrative burden. With help from AWS Professional Services, T-Digital experienced flexibility, agility, and realized cost savings.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) believes that technology is a powerful tool for driving results and innovation on campus. Their chief information officer, Mark Henderson, developed a task force—called the Data and Technology Innovation Lab—to identify department challenges and task individuals to build innovative solutions using technology. One area where UIUC identified an opportunity was sports analytics using machine learning (ML). Learn more about how UIUC was inspired by what they were seeing in professional sports, using data to shift their approach to coaching football.

Ecree, an AWS EdStart Member, was founded by educators who believed the way we teach students to write is broken. The volume of work a teacher is being asked to do means students don’t always get the necessary attention and feedback required to develop their writing skills. Ecree’s founding team set out to support teachers and students by creating the world’s first rules-based tool that assesses student writing in the same way a highly trained professor does, on-demand. The solution uses cloud technologies including machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), and voice technology to help improve student writing.

The COVID-19 pandemic magnified the health and financial strain in communities across the country. Before the pandemic hit, Wildfire, a state association for Community Action Agencies, was working with Prefix, an AWS Partner Network Technology Partner, to develop a cloud-based solution for utility and rental assistance. When the City of Phoenix requested they support the distribution of $20 million CARES Act funds, they shifted their resources and existing infrastructure and, in a matter of weeks, stood up a repeatable public-facing solution.

The impact of COVID-19 has K12 and higher education institutions working hard to prepare for students to return to learning that will be anything but typical. The 2020-2021 academic year will include various teaching and learning modalities—virtual, hybrid, and face-to-face—and most expect a shift from one to another throughout the year. Globally, EdTechs are working with AWS to accelerate features and solutions to better support students and educators in teaching and learning, physical and mental wellness, and health and safety.

Earlier today, NASA launched its Mars 2020 rover—Perseverance. Operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), the Perseverance rover will explore Mars for past signs of ancient life and collect rock and soil samples for return by a future mission. The images taken from the Mars 2020 rover will be available on NASA JPL’s public website, and will be shared with people around the world. All images returned from the mission will be hosted on the AWS Cloud.

Each year, millions of students travel abroad to study and enrich their personal development and global perspective through international student exchange programs. Virtual exchange is becoming an important part of digital learning environments due to its student-centered, cost-effective, and equitable means of advancing international education. One example is
ImmerseU, a virtual exchange learning platform developed by Class2Class, an AWS EdStart Member.

The European Commission, with three of its Directorates-General (DG) (DG SANTE, DG DIGIT, and DG CONNECT) in collaboration with the European Blood Alliance (EBA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), created the European Union (EU) COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma (CCP) Platform. This database is based on the concept of passive immunization (an approach promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO) Blood Regulators Network), which tests the potential of plasma collected from convalescent persons to treat or prevent viruses and diseases such as COVID-19.