Open call for solutions to mitigate covid-19’s collateral issues

A key and distinctive platform for social impact innovation from graduate students across the world, Global Grad Show, launches its open call for university students and professors to submit solutions to mitigate COVID-19’s collateral issues, accepting proposal submissions from 16 March to 2 April 2020.

The outbreak of COVID-19 (previously known as '2019 novel coronavirus') has developed into a pandemic causing public health emergency of a global scale and impact. Its rapid escalation has had a significant impact on various sectors including medical, economic and social, consequently resulting in a series of collateral issues in need of solutions and betterment – many of these issues restrain governments’ and health authorities’ ability to monitor and control the spread of the virus.

In an effort to channel the immense potential of universities to find solutions for such problems, Global Grad Show invites and encourages its community of university graduates, undergraduates and professors from all disciplines, academic institutions and countries to submit proposals that must address collateral issues pertinent to COVID-19, like improving the efficiency of self-quarantine, increasing treatment capacity and screening methods, mitigating contagious behaviour on an individual and group level or even ways to enable collaborative disease data collection and processing efforts amongst private and public sectors.

In light of these testing circumstances and Global Grad Show's initiative to combat the collateral issues, Brendan McGetrick, Head of Curation of the Global Grad Show and Creative Director of the Museum of the Future commented, “The challenges we face in the 21st century are inherently global. Like climate change, pandemics such as COVID-19 know no borders and threaten us all. In announcing this initiative, we hope to channel the immense creativity of the world’s universities toward the challenge of COVID-19 and its various medical, economic and social dimensions. In doing so, we hope to show the world that even our gravest threats present opportunities for innovation and community”.

A team of health professionals, innovation and technology specialists will support the selection and development of chosen projects. Any selected proposal will be supported through an acceleration programme and may be further funded to be produced and distributed at scale. A selected proposal will also receive an academic award in the form of a scholarship (covering the annual tuition fee of the selected student or establishing a research scholarship of equivalent value for the department of the selected professor).

Interested applicants should work individually or in teams, identify a problem related to COVID-19 and propose solutions. Applications are open from 16 March to 2 April 2020. Selected project will be contacted by 16 April 2020.

For more information on the application process or to apply, please click here.