André Loesekrug-Pietri, Director of the Joint European Disruptive Initiative provides a 100 seconds update on the JEDI Billion Molecules against Covid19 Grandchallenge.
About the Challenge:
Mid-March 2020, as global pandemic was declared and governments decided to confine their populations, it became clear that we would not come out of this global crisis without a vaccine or a therapy against Covid19.
The Joint European Disruptive Initiative (JEDI), the major, common-good initiative for disruptive innovation supported by the JEDI Foundation, immediately tapped into its network of 3700 technology & scientific leaders. The vision emerged that a radically new approach to therapeutic development was needed, in particular screening molecular compounds at a scale & speed never seen before, with a truly interdisciplinary approach at the convergence of dynamic modeling, molecular biology, virology, high-performance computing, and AI. End of March, the JEDI Billion Molecules against Covid19 GrandChallenge was started.
In just 5 weeks, the GrandChallenge has been launched on a global basis: we structured a world-class scientific committee, put in place an exceptional program manager, secured significant funding, negotiated strategic partnerships (in particular for molecular compounds and HPC resources), ensure global collaborations, got participation from >70 teams from the best private and public institutions in the world.
