A global competition to create privacy-enhancing technologies to accelerate data-driven decision making in epidemiology.
The Challenge will award up to five winners USD 50,000 each.
data.org is partnering with Mastercard, Harvard OpenDP, researchers from the Pontifical Javeriana University, and Sloan Foundation, to run a Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) for Public Health Challenge to unlock innovation.
While PETs have been around for a while, they have largely been a frontier technology that only a select number of regulators and a few companies in the private sector have had an interest in exploring and the luxury of doing so. But that has changed in recent years. At a global level, the G7 Data Protection and Privacy Authorities in 2023 endorsed a plan that included promoting the development and use of emerging technologies, including PETs, that can build trust and protect privacy.
PETs empower practitioners to drive progress by drawing meaningful statistical information from sensitive data while offering strong privacy guardrails. The innovation challenge will help to bring these technologies to practical applications that provide a real benefit for countries, companies and individuals.
Challenge Timeline
Associate Professor and Head of Data Science
Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Bubacarr Bah has recently been appointed as Associate Professor and Head of Data Science in the Medical Research Council (MRC) Unit – The Gambia, at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
Read moreDr. Sean Cavany is a mathematical modeler based in Ben Cooper’s Drug-Resistant Infections and Disease Dynamics (DRIaDD) group in the NDM Centre for Global Health Research at the University of Oxford.
Read moreAssistant Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Javeriana)
Zulma M. Cucunubá is an Assistant Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia.
Read moreJohn Derrico is Vice President of Data Sourcing and Emerging Technologies at Mastercard, where he’s responsible for the enterprise data sourcing strategy, working to create the next generation of products and solutions.
Read moreJack Fitzsimons leads the technology development at Oblivious, a Dublin-based technology startup focused on privacy-enhancing technologies.
Read moreChapin Flynn is a Senior Vice President in Mastercard Enterprise Partnerships. In that role, he is responsible for building enterprise-level partnerships that deliver growth with new revenue streams and reduce costs by driving operational efficiencies.
Read moreDanil Mikhailov, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of data.org. He has over 20 years of experience setting up multiple start-ups and leading work across a range of diverse sectors, always investigating and innovating in the space where technology, culture, and society converge.
Read moreGareth is a partner at TLT and head of Data Privacy and Cybersecurity.
Read moreAs Chief Data and Technology Officer, Uyi Stewart oversees all of data.org’s programmatic initiatives which today include the Generative AI Skills Challenge, Inclusive Growth and Recovery Challenge, the Capacity Accelerator Network, and Epiverse.
Read moreDr. Task’s work spans two domains at Knexus: Privacy Technology, and AI Algorithms. Regarding privacy, she researches and develops usable privacy technology solutions to real-world data privacy problems.
Read moreDr. Charlie Whittaker is a Sir Henry Wellcome Research Fellow in mathematical modeling and infectious disease epidemiology at the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, where his research centers around mathematical modeling of infectious disease transmission, with a focus on the detectability, dynamics, and control of pathogens with pandemic potential.
Read moreDr. Wanrong Zhang is a Computing Innovation Fellow at Harvard John A. Paulson School Of Engineering And Applied Sciences,
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