Open P-TECH provides students and educators access to digital learning in areas including AI, cloud computing and cybersecurity.

Free digital learning on key technical and professional skills

P–TECH is a public-education model that provides high school students from underserved backgrounds with the academic, technical, and professional skills and credentials they need for competitive STEM jobs.

Students building new collar skills

IBM SkillsBuild connects adult learners with a curated path of job-focused learning, supported by organizations that address their specific needs.

Launching new careers through learning, experience, and community

Students participating in a design session

Teams of students and teachers present compelling projects where technology helps solve existing or imminent problems facing society. Project ideas receiving the highest scores will have access to experts from IBM and our partners to transform ideas into solutions that can be used in communities across the world.

Teams of students and teachers using technology to solve problems

With Watson's teacher-specific search and resource recommendation tool, teachers can quickly find relevant math lessons, activities, videos, and more—all from a curated collection of educator-approved materials.

Free math lesson planning with Watson AI

IBM Global University Programs are at the intersection of academia and IBM—providing technology, supporting research and creating assets to advance relevant skills for today’s workforce.

Building holistic relationships with academic institutions

mindSpark Learning—a leader in professional development for educators—has partnered with IBM to bring educators in North America IBM AI Education:  an immersive, interactive professional learning suite of live and on-demand online experiences crafted by and for educators as a guide to AI’s foundational concepts and K-12 classroom connections.

Free Live Online and On-Demand Workshops for K-12 Educators

An initiative by IBM in India to improve education and career pathways for girls in schools. Join us to change the lives of these young students.

Building STEM skills and confidence in India

We believe that everyone should have the chance to succeed. IBM Skills helps students, professionals, and organizations build critical technology skills for today and stay competitive tomorrow through thousands of online courses, free training programs, and custom enterprise offerings created in partnership with universities from all over the world.

Skills for all

Providing academic organizations with software, course materials, access to IBM enterprise scale technologies and collaboration with experts so they can adapt their curricula to give students the skills they need for today&rsquo;s job market.

Academic Relations

Helping military veterans prepare for careers in advanced data analytics by offering training and certification, and job placement assistance.

Training veterans for success

Promote awareness of cybersecurity as a career option for girls

Schools network building new collar skills

Careers-focused learning, experiences, and community

Free live online and on-demand workshops for K-12 educators

The Traffik Analysis Hub (TA Hub) is a revolutionary partnership across industries and sectors including financial institutions, NGOs, law enforcement and government agencies; all unified by the common goal of sharing data to stop human trafficking. 

Unite. Share. Disrupt human trafficking.

Allied Against Cancer works to improve evidence-based practice by putting technical resources in the hands of practitioners.

Empowering the African oncology community to deliver quality care

IBM launched the Call for code initiative in 2019, based on an overwhelming response and the desire to create a framework for putting top coding challenge projects into action.

Tackling world’s biggest challenges with open source technology

Learn how innovative companies and individuals are using IBM Blockchain to transform the world’s biggest challenges into humanity’s biggest triumphs. Let’s put smart to work.™

Let’s use blockchain for social good

IBM Research scientists and engineers partner with academics and experts from non–governmental organizations to take on societal challenges.

Solving the world’s toughest problems by accelerating solutions

Your computer can do volunteer work

Empowering the African oncology community to deliver high-quality care

Transforming the world’s biggest challenges into the biggest triumphs

Tackling the world’s biggest challenges with open source technology

Promote cybersecurity as a career option globally among girls

Unite. Share. Disrupt human trafficking

A P-TECH school in Australia welcomes students who haven&rsquo;t fit in mainstream schools, giving them opportunities for personal and academic growth, as well as bright prospects for success beyond school.

P-TECH school opens doors to an array of students

Gabe isn&rsquo;t a typical P-TECH student. Then again, many of the students in the P-TECH program in Ballarat, Australia, are ones who didn&rsquo;t fit in at mainstream schools. But here, at Federation College Australia, Gabe has found his place.&ldquo;P-TECH has definitely changed my life and made it easier,&rdquo; he says of the IBM-inspired program. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s definitely given me the opportunity to do what I never thought I&rsquo;d be able to do.&rdquo;Gabe is severely visually impaired, needing a cane to walk. Yet he manages school full time as well as caring for his mother.Some of the other students in the program have learning disabilities, physical disabilities, and a few are on the autism spectrum. Some have had troubles socializing, some have been home schooled for various reasons. But all of the students have concerned parents who want their teenagers to have a bright future and land a good job.&ldquo;My favorite part of P-TECH has been the opportunities I have been given to engage with a wide range of people,&rdquo; Gabe says. &ldquo;It has provided me with the potential to pursue further studies that were not previously possible. I have greater confidence and I am more active in the world. I see lots of possibilities for the future.&rdquo;That confidence transformed him from being reserved to being outwardly focused. He now sees his quest as helping others. He&rsquo;s run workshops for Vision Australia, and is a member of the City of Ballarat&rsquo;s Youth Advisory Board.For Rory, a classmate of Gabe&rsquo;s, the P-TECH school has also been a huge, positive change. In public school, she was bullied and felt she couldn&rsquo;t be the person she was. She was later diagnosed with autism-spectrum disorder.At P-TECH, she&rsquo;s thrived, finding the teachers to be friendly, easy to connect with and encouraging everyone to be who they are.&ldquo;P-TECH offered me opportunities that I would never have been able to pursue in my small, rural school,&rdquo; Rory says. &ldquo;Coming here has been a dream that I thought I would never be able to experience. I am planning on furthering my skills and knowledge in relation to IT, either by pursuing further study or gaining employment in a technology-related job.&rdquo;Rory, Gabe and five other P-TECH students recently spent their summer break doing six-week internships at a nearby campus of IBM, which is the school&rsquo;s industry partner.P-TECH schools around the world blend classroom and career, giving teenage students the chance to earn free, tech-related degrees from their country&rsquo;s equivalent of high school, and community or junior college.Companies affiliated with a P-TECH school provide practical experience and workplace skills through mentors and internships.For Rory&rsquo;s internship, she joined a team working on a Hadoop proof-of-concept project, which involved big-data analysis for two international airlines. Rory stepped in with no knowledge or experience with Hadoop, which is an open-source platform for dealing with very large data sets.It gave Rory with experience working on real-world solutions to real-world problems.&ldquo;The challenging part of the internship was my lack of prior experience in this type of project, which I was able to overcome,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;I guess you could say I grew with the project in knowledge and experience.&rdquo;For his internship, Gabe helped develop a website for an IBM team that supports a large Australian Federal Government agency. He learned a new programming language, which he found easy to learn and allowed him to enhance the quality of the website.Gabe and Rory are each pursuing a diploma in information technology at the university.Australia continues to expand the number of schools offering P-TECH programs, giving more students like Gabe and Rory the chance to find academic and personal success, and to see a future of wide#8211;open opportunities.

Two students in Australia tell of their acceptance and opportunities at a P-TECH school.

Taiwan is the first East Asian country to adopt the P-TECH model. For former IBM Taiwan General Manager Jason Hsu, this meant an opportunity to return to his alma mater to help students as a teacher and as a mentor.

Former top IBM exec becomes teacher and mentor

P-TECH is giving Jason Hsu a chance to give back.Hsu joined IBM in 1982. Eighteen years later, in 2000, he became the leader of IBM Taiwan. When he was named outstanding alumnus by National Taipei University of Technology (Taipei Tech) in 2001, he said, &ldquo;I want to pass my experience on to the next generation. I plan on becoming a teacher at 60. Even if the school does not pay me, I am willing to devote myself to education.&rdquo;As the years ticked by, the urge to pass on his experience and help others became greater, and Hsu kept this promise. &ldquo;It was like I had set an alarm clock for my life &#8212; suddenly, I was awakened,&rdquo; he said.In 2013, at the age of 55, Hsu decided to answer the call of his heart &#8212; to become an educator. He retired and soon afterward was teaching a leadership development course at National Taiwan University. Nearby National Tsing Hua University also invited him to teach.In 2018, Hsu had the opportunity to help P-TECH students.That year, Taiwan became the first Asian country to implement the P-TECH model, which coincided with the government&rsquo;s Re-Activate Junior College 5-year Program Plan to help students succeed in the modern workforce.The Taiwan Ministry of Education had been looking for ways to revive college-level vocational education to overcome the perennial disconnect between school and the workplace. So Taiwan brought in the IBM P-TECH model for its five-year junior college program. (This differs from the U.S. model of a high school diploma and a two-year degree.)Taiwan&rsquo;s three P-TECH schools opened in September 2018, welcoming 165 students in the first year:<ul><li>Taipei Tech &#8212; Intelligent Automation Engineering</li><li>National Formosa University &#8212; Precise Mechanical Engineering</li><li>National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology &#8212; Mold and Die Engineering & Civil Engineering</li></ul>IBM Taiwan has recruited Jenteh Junior College of Medicine, Nursing and Management, a private medical college, as the nation&rsquo;s fourth P-TECH school and the first in the field of medicine and occupational safety in Taiwan.The P-TECH schools in Taiwan are akin to those everywhere else, equipping students to be well-prepared for careers or further education through mentorships, workplace experiences and job-relevant coursework.Hsu was invited by his alma mater, Taipei Tech, to be an IBM P-TECH mentor and the lead lecturer of the workplace learning curriculum, a key course within P-TECH. One of his major goals is to help students learn how to solve problems. &ldquo;In the traditional education system, you always have standard answers to any questions,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;However, in the future, it’s crucial to be capable of solving unknown problems!&rdquo;He emphasizes hands-on education, and encourages students to bring up topics that help them figure out real-life problems. He also wants to help students gain skills in collaboration, communication and presentation, and develop proficiency in English so they can be ready for the global world of business.Hsu urges his students not to limit themselves to engineering because there are so many other possibilities. As a teacher and mentor, he also encourages his students to develop their talents, create personal values, and find their purpose in life. It&rsquo;s not only about helping society, but also about being exposed to a variety of people and environments, daring to take risks so they can create their own life stories.Mostly he wants them to find fulfillment. &ldquo;Even if others only care about what you’ve achieved,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;I care about whether you are happy and enjoying every moment at this school.&rdquo;

Jason Hsu once headed IBM Taiwan. Once he retired, he fulfilled his dream to become an educator. He now shares his decades of wisdom with P-TECH students.

The first P-TECH school in a non-English speaking country opened in 2017 in Casablanca, Morocco. Ahmed Idrissi is one student who was turned down repeatedly. But thanks to teachers, mentors, and new skills, he now sees a bright future as an IT engineer.

Opportunities open with Morocco’s first P-TECH school

Ahmed Idrissi is the eighth of nine children and lives with his siblings in one of Casablanca&rsquo;s poorest neighborhoods. His parents moved to a different city several years ago to make a better living for their family.Idrissi had little use for school.&ldquo;Going to school was burdensome for me,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;In fact, I rarely attended class more than two hours a day. The rest of the time I spent with my friends or at home.&rdquo;When he failed his first year of high school, he decided to switch schools.&ldquo;My decision was in part motivated by my desire to distance myself from the group of friends I had at the time, with whom I got into a lot of trouble,&rdquo; he says.A friend told him about P-TECH Ibn Ghazala in Casablanca, Morocco, the first P-TECH school in a non-English speaking country and the first in Africa.The school opened in September 2017 with 61 students, nearly doubling in its second year.At a P-TECH school, students earn their high school diploma while also working toward a two-year associate degree in an IT field, such as cybersecurity, mobile application development, or Web development. (The first P-TECH school opened in New York City in 2011, a collaboration involving IBM.)Ahmed felt that P-TECH would be a good fit for him. But when he went to enroll, registration was closed. He wasn’t deterred. Over the next two weeks, he showed up at the school regularly, urging the administration to accept him.&ldquo;The headmaster of Ahmed&rsquo;s previous high school advised me against accepting him at our school,&rdquo; says Hicham Barfete, the principal. &ldquo;For him, Ahmed was a hopeless case, having already failed two years.&rdquo;But in the face of Idrissi&rsquo;s determination, the principal and educational staff finally agreed to accept him. They felt that with the right support and guidance, Idrissi could succeed.At 19, Idrissi is one of the older students at P-TECH Ibn Ghazala. He is also one of its best students.&ldquo;Ahmed is one of my most serious and studious students” says Ihssan Belhabes, the science teacher. &ldquo;If you were to meet him today, you’d have a hard time believing that he once was a struggling student. Nothing in him says that; not his behavior and definitely not his grades.&rdquo;For Idrissi, the fit couldn’t be better. &ldquo;My teachers at P-TECH are like my second family and school is like my second home. Only two years ago, if someone had told me that one day I would have such a good support system at school or such a great relationship with my teachers, I would never have believed them.&rdquo;Idrissi owes much of his change in attitude to the many &ldquo;soft,&rdquo; or professional skills, he gained from workshops at P-TECH. Not only did he adopt a positive attitude toward learning, he also developed communication and leadership skills.There&rsquo;s also mentoring as part of every P-TECH program. IBM professionals offer students guidance and advice about academics and careers.&ldquo;My mentor talked to me a lot about his job at IBM,&rdquo; says Idrissi. &ldquo;His enthusiasm when he talks about his role and his journey to becoming an IT engineer has encouraged me to pursue my studies in this field as well.&rdquo;Idrissi&rsquo;s dream is to become an IT engineer. He hopes to become the most successful among his siblings. But above all, he wants to make his parents proud.

One student believed he could succeed through the P-TECH program, but school administrators had lots of reasons not to admit him.

In Colombia, there aren&rsquo;t enough qualified people to meet the demand for IT professionals. To help bridge that gap, the nation opened its first P-TECH school. Students gain all the skills they need to smoothly step into IT jobs.

Boosting Colombia&rsquo;s IT workforce with P-TECH

The technology industry continues to expand in Colombia. Yet the number of IT professionals is declining. The projected gap at the end of 2019 was an estimated 79,000 people.To stay competitive, Colombia needs to meet its growing demand for IT talent with experts in today&rsquo;s technologies, such as cloud computing, big data, and the Internet of Things (IoT). But employees also need workplace skills to succeed &#8212; such as teamwork, critical thinking, and leadership &#8212; that are increasingly important in the tech industry.One recent effort is the opening Colombia&rsquo;s first P-TECH school. On November 2018, P-TECH was officially launched at the Gerardo Paredes Public School in northwest Bogotá, a community of low-income families.P-TECH is an education initiative created by IBM that prepares students with the academic, technical, and professional skills required for today’s tech jobs. Students take high school and college coursework simultaneously, while also working with mentors and doing job internships. Once students graduate, they are well prepared to step into IT jobs.Introducing P-TECH in Colombia addressed three big challenges in meeting the demand for IT workers:<ul><li>Limited relevance of school curricula to the needs of industries</li><li>High drop-out rates in higher education</li><li>Low participation of women in the workforce</li></ul>At the ceremony opening Colombia&rsquo;s new school, Sylvia Cristina Constaín Rengifo, Minister of Information and Communication Technologies, said:&ldquo;Initiatives like P-TECH, that we kickoff today, have the potential of generating greater impact, of going further. We are looking to join efforts to achieve this kind of impact, and we are greatly thankful for these initiatives ... But our aim is scalability: to be able to grow this program would truly make a difference for the country and for these youth that are looking for their path. Programs like this allow us to say to them: there ARE opportunities for you!&rdquo;Through P-TECH, successful students can graduate into successful professionals, who in turn can help Colombia&rsquo;s tech sector prosper.

The nation&rsquo;s first P-TECH school will help feed the tech industry&rsquo;s growing demand for talent.

P-TECH in Colombia becomes an opportunity to reduce inequality in the country by articulating diverse actors around education and software development.

Ireland is the first country in Europe to adopt the P-TECH school model, which combines high school and college courses with workplace experience. It also gives students in underserved communities a solid path to a digital career.

Dublin students get ready for P-TECH

Recruitment started with 170 participating students, coming from three Dublin schools: St. Joseph&rsquo;s Christian Brothers School, Marin College, and Larkin Community College, attending &ldquo;taster activities&rdquo; over six months. These included several workshops that offered practical and hands-on activities, giving students a chance to analyze data, make predictions, solve problems, and build and program robots. Students had a chance to meet the schools&rsquo; industry partners - IBM, Cisco, Virgin Media, Irish Water, and Irish Life - as well as its college partner, the National College of Ireland. An inspiring visit was to IBM&rsquo;s Technology Campus where students experienced the X-Force Command Cyber Tactical Operations Center, the first-of-its-kind training, simulation and security operations center on wheels.The activities gave students, including Nicola Wasilewska, who has a strong interest in art, an idea of some of experiences and skills they would learn if they attended the P-TECH school.&ldquo;I was curious about P-TECH because I enjoy programming and then I realized that I could learn more about art and how I could be creative with robots,&rdquo; says Wasilewska, a first-year student at Larkin Community College. &ldquo;I am really into it and really looking forward to the future. I wasn’t sure if I would want to do P-TECH, but now I really want to.&rdquo;Most students recruited for P-TECH are from disadvantaged neighborhoods. There are no testing or grade requirements to get in; enrollment is based on interest.The P-TECH school in Ireland gives students the opportunity to earn both their secondary school qualification and a QQI (Quality and Qualifications Ireland) level 6 qualification that&rsquo;s in demand by employers. (The equivalent in the United States is students earning both their high-school diploma and a two-year associate&rsquo;s degree.)Students also get opportunities to have industry mentors and paid internships, along with guaranteed interviews upon graduation.&ldquo;These students are making history,&rdquo; says Gerard Cullen, principal of St. Joseph&rsquo;s. &ldquo;They will be the first in Ireland (and Europe) to enroll as P-TECH students and to complete school, not only with their traditional school qualification but with a P-TECH qualification and with the workplace skills which will give them the ability to make informed choices in their lives. They may go on to further education or into entry level positions with these or other industry partners, or they may do both, work and continue to study.&rdquo;&ldquo;The future is very bright for these young people.&rdquo;

The P-TECH approach to education offers students in underserved communities a pathway to valuable careers in the digital economy.

As a kid, Gabriel Rosa thought tech was fun. By 14, he was a P-TECH freshman. At 16, an IBM intern. Now he&rsquo;s one of dozens of P-TECH grads who works full-time at the company.

Gaining new collar skills through P-TECH

Lots of teenagers get into trouble at school. When Gabriel Rosa was 14, he hacked into his school&rsquo;s computer system. When the principal found out, he called Rosa into his office. After a stern talk, the principal handed him a MacBook computer.&ldquo;He told me to experiment on something more productive, rather than destructive,&rdquo; Rosa said. &ldquo;For me, getting that computer was the best thing ever. I had taught myself how computers work by reading my dad&rsquo;s old computer engineering textbooks in the basement, and having my own let me explore and expand my skills in subjects I was interested in.&rdquo;Rosa attended the Pathways in Technology Early College High School, or P-TECH, in Brooklyn, N.Y., a career-focused program co-founded by IBM. The six-year program weaves together high-school, community college, mentoring, paid internships, hands-on learning.Rosa, like other P-TECH students, began taking college courses the summer after ninth grade, learning programming, virtual reality and mobile app development. That same year, Rosa&rsquo;s teacher connected the class with a NASA hackathon.&ldquo;We created a solar system app as part of the hackathon,&rdquo; Rosa said. &ldquo;I had the chance to meet a lot of interesting people and see how they were able to collaborate to make something together. It let me take what I had learned in school and the things I taught myself and put those skills to work.&rdquo;He saw the same collaborative dynamic during an internship with IBM during his third year of school, when he worked alongside user-experience designers and digital strategists.Rosa made good on his principal&rsquo;s advice. By 2015, he had finished P-TECH&rsquo;s six-year program in just four years, and he became the first in his family to earn an associate&rsquo;s degree.&ldquo;When my parents were 18 or 19, they didn&rsquo;t have the opportunities that I&rsquo;ve had,&rdquo; Rosa said. &ldquo;My dad came to this country from the Dominican Republic when he was about my age. I have two younger brothers and two younger sisters, and I&rsquo;m glad I can set a good example for them.&rdquo;Through his internship contacts, Rosa landed a full-time job at IBM as a front-end developer. At 19, he was creating websites for IBM&rsquo;s online marketplace. Using his background in programming, he collaborated with designers to bring their ideas to life.&ldquo;P-TECH itself was an experiment, and it allowed me to grow and change how I deal with problems, both in my personal life and my professional life,&rdquo; Rosa said. &ldquo;Now I have a job that I love where I get to see how design, user and business needs come together to make a great final product.&rdquo;

Gabriel Rosa&rsquo;s path from being a student at P-TECH Brooklyn to landing a job as a front-end developer at IBM.

P-TECH graduate Gabriel Rosa narrates the story of how he learned about the school, and how it prepared him for his &ldquo;new collar&rdquo; job at IBM.

The P-TECH public-private partnership in Newburgh, N.Y., is just one of many such programs around the world that creates a bridge for students from underserved communities to first-rate jobs.

&ldquo;Ever Upward&rdquo; for Excelsior Academy&rsquo;s First Graduates

Excelsior – the motto of New York State – means &ldquo;ever upward,&rdquo; and signifies New Yorkers&rsquo; desire to achieve. I can think of no better inspiration for our <a href="https://www.ptech.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">P-TECH</a> school within Newburgh Free Academy – the school I lead, in partnership with IBM and the <a href="http://www.sunyorange.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Orange County Community College (SUNY Orange)</a>. P-TECH is a special place of promise and opportunity for Newburgh&rsquo;s young people, and today marks the realization of that promise as 17 of our first graduates earn their college degrees.These 17 students represent more than one-third of our first cohort, earning their high school diplomas and associate degrees two full years ahead of schedule. The fact that young people from some of our community&rsquo;s most challenging family environments are succeeding academically with the promise of moving forward into growth-industry employment, four-year institutions or both is a testament to their drive and to the P-TECH model&rsquo;s ability to recognize and focus it.This is an amazing accomplishment for these students, and I am confident that the other students in the same cohort also will earn their associate degrees within the next two years of their schooling with us. &ldquo;Early&rdquo; is great. But we want college completion – and a pathway for greater achievements – for all. <a href="https://www.cityofnewburgh-ny.gov/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Newburgh</a>, once a prosperous Hudson River transportation hub and industrial city, is again on the rise after decades of hard times. But while the city&rsquo;s future looks brighter than its recent past, the many societal problems that stem from high levels of unemployment affect the opportunities of many of the area&rsquo;s youth.Our student body is 85 percent Black and Hispanic, and more than 75 percent are free/reduced price lunch eligible. Many will be the first in their families to earn a postsecondary degree, and all will have the opportunity to move into a growing employment sector and well-paying careers. Newburgh&rsquo;s P-TECH – and the larger P-TECH model of which it is a proud part – not only helps make this happen, but does so without saddling our graduates with oppressive student loan debt.Given this opportunity, it&rsquo;s no surprise that our students (who entered P-TECH without any testing or grade requirements) have responded to our support with their best efforts.<ul><li>Our attendance rate is 94 percent</li><li>Our retention rate is 95 percent</li><li>Eighty-five percent of our 11th and 12th graders have passed full-credit college courses</li><li>In their first year of college coursework eligibility, 83 percent of our 10th graders met college-ready benchmarks and are enrolled in full-credit college courses</li><li>Twenty-seven students have completed paid IT internships with IBM, as well as St. Luke&rsquo;s Hospital</li><li>This summer, more than 25 additional Excelsior students will complete paid internships with IBM, in addition to St. Luke&rsquo;s and other local companies</li></ul>As the first program of its kind in this region, the Newburgh Enlarged City School District&rsquo;s P-TECH public-private partnership signals a breakthrough in the reinvention of education and its connection to jobs. I am thankful to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who launched New York State P-TECH with the first 16 school in 2014, and has continued to support the model with 30+ additional P-TECH schools now underway or being planned.Our graduates will return to their community with no-cost associate degrees in the dynamic fields of cybersecurity or computer networking. Equipped with their academic credentials and paid workplace experience, these young men and women will help usher in the next era of productivity and prosperity for Newburgh and for New York State.Kevin Rothman is the House Principal of Newburgh Free Academy P-TECH in Newburgh, New York.

From the voice of the principal, here is a look at the students of Newburgh Free Academy P-TECH on graduation day and what lies ahead for the them.

A software tool helps governments with limited data to better predict what cancer medicines will be needed. Better forecasts enable purchasing the right drugs in the right quantities, and improving affordability for patients.

Forecasting the need for chemotherapy medicines

Cancer is a growing crisis around the world. In sub-Saharan Africa, more than 500,000 people died of cancer in 2015 &#8212; a toll that&rsquo;s expected to double by 2030, according to the World Health Organization.In many low-income nations, cancer medicines often are in short supply, prohibitively expensive, of poor quality &#8212; or a combination of those three. National health ministries need a way to forecast cancer cases so they can order the right chemotherapy treatments in quantities that give them competitive pricing, reliable stock levels and assured quality.IBM Health Corps experts worked with the American Cancer Society to design and build ChemoQuant &#8212; a free, IBM cloud-hosted tool that helps health ministries better forecast their chemotherapy needs. The tool draws upon IBM&rsquo;s analytics, data science, and cancer epidemiology expertise. ChemoQuant is helping Ethiopia, Uganda and Nigeria forge agreements for access to therapies at significantly lower costs.

A software tool called ChemoQuant helps countries with limited resources to forecast their cancer medicine needs, improving care and saving money.

Addressing Cancer Disparities: IBM Health Corps and the American Cancer Society

In Bihar, India, access to medications is poor. Many facilities run out, yet others throw away expired drugs. IBM Health Corps and CARE India showed how integrating data can improve the supply flow of medications.

Bihar, India, mines data to meet medication needs

The state of Bihar in northeast India is home to more than 100 million people, with almost 90 percent living in rural areas. At public health facilities, access to medications is poor &#8212; only 30 percent to 50 percent are available &#8212; even as the list of essential drugs has expanded in recent years.Forecasting which drugs are needed in Bihar typically has not been based on data, which means some facilities run out of medications, while others throw away expired ones. Many patients end up going without, or for those who can pay, going to expensive private pharmacies. This is especially burdensome in a state where one third of the population lives in poverty.Making better use of data could help solve the problem.A big hinderance is that data on drug consumption resides in one IT system, while data on drug procurement and distribution lives in another system. Neither are linked to the other. So decision-makers are unable to order the right amounts of medications to match ever-changing needs.IBM Health Corps and CARE India joined forces to show how integrating data can improve the supply flow of essential medicines. In three weeks, the IBM Health Corps team built a platform that merged the two datasets and provided visualizations of the data to help those who make the decisions &#8212; such as district-level administrators and state bureaucrats &#8212; understand gaps, wastage, and where to prioritize.Integrating the data can help avoid drug shortages for patients and reduce their out-of-pocket costs.Bihar doesn’t lack health data, but it needed some help to make its data more usable. CARE India and IBM Health Corps showed how to tap data to make better decisions, which means better health care.

Access to medications has long been difficult in this rural state. IBM Health Corps and CARE India combined data to help improve the supply flow of essential medicines.

Utah seeks to better forecast the right mix of primary care workers to match the varying needs of its residents. Getting it right can mean a more efficient, more cost-effective system that can better help people.

Utah strives to be wise about health care

Sixty percent of Americans live with at least one chronic disease, such as heart disease, cancer, stroke, or diabetes. There’s a growing demand for health care that steps in earlier to help prevent and manage diseases in the first place, not only to improve people’s health, but to reduce the rising costs of care as well. These efforts involve teams of physicians, nurses, behavioral health clinicians, and others to provide primary care.Traditionally, how many of these primary care workers there are has depended on population size. A big city, for example, has more of them than a small town. But that simple math ignores a complex reality.Certain diseases can be more prevalent in some areas than others. Demographics also vary. Areas with many retirees have different needs than ones with younger populations. Managing diseases requires an array of health professionals, including pharmacists, nurse practitioners, and chronic-disease coaches.Being more strategic about having the right mix of primary care professionals can mean a more efficient, more cost-effective system that can better help people.Utah is one state working on this. The Utah Area Health Education Centers Program (Utah AHEC) and Utah Medical Education Council (UMEC) began developing a model to project how many primary care workers it would need to match the varying needs of its residents.Utah is one state working on this. The Utah Area Health Education Centers Program (Utah AHEC) and Utah Medical Education Council (UMEC) began developing a model to project how many primary care workers it would need to match the varying needs of its residents.The objectives are to:<ul><li>Make sure that primary care workers are used most effectively.</li><li>Ensure that medical education is meeting the demands of the workplace.</li><li>Help health insurance companies understand the cost advantages of primary care.</li></ul>To help realize their goals, Utah AHEC and UMEC approached IBM. Over three weeks, IBM helped:<ul><li>Create a model to explore how to calculate the best-suited workforce required to meet primary care needs.</li><li>Simplify the inputs required to get the model working and create a framework that can use new types of data as needed.</li><li>Build users&rsquo; confidence in the model by allowing them to change underlying assumptions.</li><li>Create an architecture that linked the data, the optimization model, and the user interface.</li></ul>The project tapped IBM&rsquo;s expertise in data science, user experience, and principles of data transparency to help improve a tool that matches the needs of communities with the right primary care.

The state is working toward providing the right mix of primary care workers to suit the varying needs of communities.

IBM Health Corps partnered with the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control to improve its efforts against dengue fever. The results offered promise for dealing with both dengue and other public health problems.

New approach helps Taiwan fight dengue fever

Dengue viruses are common in more than 100 countries around the globe. The mosquitoes that spread dengue are found in most tropical and subtropical regions of the world, including several parts of the United States.Each year, about 100 million people get sick from one the four dengue viruses, with 22,000 dying from severe dengue. That rate has increased 30-fold over the past 50 years.After a decade of few dengue cases in Taiwan, a large outbreak occurred in the city of Kaohsiung in 2014 with15,492 cases. The next year, southern Taiwan suffered an even larger outbreak, with 43,419 cases and 228 deaths.IBM Health Corps partnered with the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control to help improve its efforts to fight dengue fever. This video shows what they did.

IBM Health Corps helped Taiwan’s disease control agency make better use of its data to refine its strategy and to figure out the most effective interventions.

Using Design to Tackle Dengue Fever: An IBM and Taiwan CDC Collaboration

Ivor Cook learned plenty about security during his 20 years in the British Army. After he left the service, he eventually realized he needed to add cybersecurity to his expertise.

UK vet gains the cybersecurity know-how he&nbsp;needed

I left school at 18 and went to work in London, while also joining the Army Reserves for a taste of adventure. When the British Army required extra personnel, I volunteered to join the Regular Army for a year.That one year turned into 20. It was a journey of challenge and discovery. It was also a total privilege, through good and bad.When the time came to hang up my uniform, I had a hard time picturing my next adventure. I had training and experience in security, plus the leadership and management skills that came with being a warrant officer. I wanted to pursue a security-related career in the private sector, but I faced an industry that evolves rapidly, especially cybersecurity.The speed of change also means security efforts are constantly trying to adapt. It can be challenging to keep up. I was able to forge a career in other aspects of security, ones that covered personnel, information, and physical security. For a while at least, I could put cybersecurity in the &ldquo;too difficult&rdquo; category and focus on what was in my comfort zone, which was dealing with people and things.But with cybersecurity becoming a growing part of everyone&rsquo;s daily life, I realized that I if I didn&rsquo;t gain a solid grasp of it, my career options would be limited. I found that a significant number of companies see the cyberthreat as first and foremost, with some using that label to define all other security threats. They can lose sight of broader security concerns and how to manage them. With my background I had something to offer professionally, but by learning more and finding a role in cybersecurity, I could become a more versatile and relevant security professional.I came across a U.K. organization called <a href="https://www.salutemyjob.com/ibm-i2-course-information" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Salute My Job</a>, which collaborates with IBM to offer training and employment help for veterans &#8212; including introductory courses on cybersecurity.IBM staff have devised free, credentialed programs in the United Kingdom -- similar to the ones it offers veterans in the United States. I did a five-day course on QRadar, an IBM product that detects threats to IT systems. It was transformational for me, adding to my expertise the piece that I needed. I not only learned about QRadar, but also about threat intelligence &#8212; which allows one to prevent or mitigate cyberattacks &#8212; and security operations in the cyber domain.Through Salute My Job, I applied to IBM because I valued their elegant solutions and wanted to be part of that. I now work at IBM as a security consultant, assessing risks and reducing their threat.The journey I made is one that&rsquo;s facing the security industry as a whole. Do you take a security professional like me and train them in cybersecurity? Or do you take a technology expert and train them in security? But making sure cybersecurity stands at the forefront is part of my job now, and one that IBM tools and consulting services are helping the industry with. Both the course and the access to IBMers gave me the confidence to pursue my new career. I have found a new life in it, applying my experience and training to benefit IBM. What I get in return is the opportunity to learn and grow anew in the security profession that I enjoy.Image provided by one of our partners, Corsham Institute.

Ivor Cook learned plenty about security while serving in the British Army. But when he left the service, he needed to expand his expertise.

After years in the military, Frank Johnson became an i2 Lab Services Intelligence and Training Consultant with IBM Security. He now travels around the world, providing the training that he had such a hard time finding when he completed his military service.

An IBMer trains other veterans for success

I am a veteran, and an IBMer who works for veterans. If all I had was one sentence to say what I feel and do every day, that sentence is it.I spent eight years active duty in the Air Force, and two more in the Virginia National Guard.After completing my service, I needed new skills. Like other veterans, I wanted to continue serving the greater good. Despite being keenly motivated, it was difficult for me to find training programs I could afford, or employers who were willing to train me.Now my position at IBM helps me to bring new-collar skills training to veterans. I travel around the world to deliver the very training that I had such a hard time finding when I completed my own military service, working with such partners as Corporate America Supports You.At IBM, I teach skills to clients. And in partnership with IBM Corporate Social Responsibility&rsquo;s Veteran Employment Accelerator program, I also help veterans continue their service to their communities. I teach software skills in IBM i2 Analyst&rsquo;s Notebook, a world leader in investigative analysis and visualization software. I also teach IBM QRadar, one of the nimblest and most effective security information event management applications available. At IBM, I&rsquo;m able to teach people who want to continue to serve the greater good the new-collar skills that enhance their employabiity and help close America&rsquo;s skills gap. Our economy needs skilled workers; veterans bring the ability, maturity and dedication that makes them ideal candidates for mid-career transitions into essential professions.My days are populated with good people, not just the veterans I teach, but also my fellow IBMers and our partners and customers. The IBMers who have helped me fit into our team are why I am so positive about working here. The people who have mentored me while valuing my pre-IBM perspective and experience have inspired me to pay it forward. It&rsquo;s the people that came before me &#8212; who made IBM what it is today &#8212; who paved the way for me to be part of everything we&rsquo;re doing to transform the way the world does business.Frank Johnson is an i2 Lab Services Intelligence and Training Consultant with IBM Security.

After years in the military, Frank Johnson became an i2 Lab Services Intelligence and Training Consultant with IBM Security.

U.S. Air Force veteran Felicia Barnett boosted her career as a senior business analyst through IBM&rsquo;s Veteran Employment Accelerator program.

A veteran gains the skills to propel her career

Starting over is never easy. But I was fortunate to get the right opportunity at the right time to harness my passion for protecting people into service through a new-collar career in the private sector. The key was developing the right skills to transition successfully from the military. I served in the U.S. Air Force for eight years as a staff sergeant, where I conducted IT work and tactical and combat communications. During the last four years of my service, I worked in special operations with both the Navy and Army Special Forces. I traveled all over the world programming to ensure that deployed service members could communicate on the ground and in the air.In 2010, I left the military to focus on my family and pursue a career in the private sector. While I was unclear of the path ahead, I was confident that the technical and leadership skills I had built during my military career would translate into corporate America. However, like many veterans, I found the transition to the civilian workforce was harder than I thought, since I had entered the military almost immediately after high school. After leaving the Air Force with eight years of IT experience programming routers and switches under some of the worst conditions imaginable, I came back home, put together a resume and sent out applications, but couldn&rsquo;t get an interview. It was pretty hard.I enrolled in college, but after a year, I felt an itching to return to work. While maintaining a full class load, I made use of my project management skills and secured a job at TD Bank North America as a project specialist in fraud management. During that time &#8212; while attending a career fair for veterans &#8212; I learned of a free skills training opportunity through IBM&rsquo;s Veteran Employment Accelerator program. The week-long intensive program includes training and certification in cutting edge IBM software (i2 Analyst&rsquo;s Notebook), which helps financial institutions detect and fight fraud. I signed up and became a certified data analyst. The program&rsquo;s interactive setting exposed me to real-world examples that in turn led to real-world applications. I quickly gained technical proficiency in fraud detectionThe certification helped me propel my career as an expert in IBM software to help protect consumers from financial fraud. In my current role as a senior business analyst, I play a significant role within TD Bank&rsquo;s North American Fraud Analytics team, and spearhead the implementation of a new IBM cloud analytics platform. I plan to continue to advance my skills by honing techniques in IBM&rsquo;s predictive analytics software to help improve customer satisfaction and manage risk.After leaving the military, I never thought I would find a job that could meet my personal passion for service. Yet after five years in consumer data protection, I found purpose in a second career that makes me excited to go to work every day. The free IBM skills training I received helped equip me with the tools to accelerate my career track. In addition, I find so much value in what I am doing. Just like serving in the military, I am protecting people.An Air Force veteran and mother of four, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/felicia-barnett-42a0615a/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Felicia Barnett</a> is a senior business analyst with the North American Fraud Analytics team of TD Bank &#8212; a partner in IBM&rsquo;s Veteran Employment Accelerator.

Felicia Barnett became a senior business analyst at TD Bank after serving in the Air Force and participating in IBM's Veteran Employment Accelerator.

Introducing: IBM&rsquo;s Veteran Employment Accelerator Program

Human trafficking and modern slavery are global problems that exploit men, women, and children in both industrialized and emerging countries. With the help of IBM i2 intelligence analysis software, the nonprofit STOP THE TRAFFIK is working to disrupt human trafficking networks at their source.

Using AI to combat human trafficking

After serving as Deputy Director of Intelligence for the U.K. Serious Organised Crime Agency &#8212; similar to the FBI in the U.S. &#8212; I found that &ldquo;retiring&rdquo; really wasn&rsquo;t an option for me. I couldn&rsquo;t walk away from the fight against human trafficking and other forms of modern slavery. It&rsquo;s just too important. That&rsquo;s why I became an advisor to STOP THE TRAFFIK, a coalition that aims to end human trafficking worldwide.Most of the victims are women and children. In the U.S. alone, nearly 1 million people are trafficked across the borders each year, according to the U.S. State Department. Eighty percent of those victims are female, and 50 percent are children. And it&rsquo;s all happening right under our noses.This ruthless exploitation of our fellow humans drives a $150 billion-per-year criminal industry &#8212; in the same league with drug trafficking and major financial crimes. Yet systematic, organized resistance to human trafficking began only about 10 years ago as public- and private-sector leaders came to recognize the pervasiveness of it, the enormity of the profits, and the breadth and depth of misery and despair caused by modern slavery.Human trafficking victims are forced into agricultural, domestic and industrial labor; prostitution; and other forms of exploitation from which there is little chance of escape. There are three approaches to help thwart these crimes:<ul><li>NGOs help communities become more aware of trafficking and to support victims.</li><li>Law enforcement targets the traffickers.</li><li>Financial institutions identify and track the flow of funds related to trafficking.</li></ul>Of these three approaches, helping banks follow the money is where IBM&rsquo;s expertise and technology are making a major impact. The banking and finance sectors have fought money laundering for decades. Although it&rsquo;s harder now for criminals to hide their money, those funds still can be intermingled with those from legitimate businesses. A critically important way to expose these activities is through better sharing of information.To that end, IBM worked with STOP THE TRAFFIK to develop a new, IBM Cloud-hosted data hub that enables institutions such as Barclays, Europol, Liberty Global, Lloyd&rsquo;s Banking Group, University College London, Western Union and others to provide its analysts with information to help combat human trafficking. Using AI and machine learning, the tool is trained to recognize and detect specific human trafficking terms and incidents. AI also enables the hub to ingest open-source data &#8212; including thousands of daily news feeds &#8212; to help analysts better identify the characteristics of human trafficking, such as recruitment and transportation.Only authenticated partners have access to the secure data hub, to which they can upload non-personal data related to human trafficking. The tool then uses AI to aggregate and interpret the data &#8212; transforming it into information that governments, NGOs, and financial institutions can act on. By analyzing unstructured data and sharing the results, the platform improves cross-sector collaboration.Finally, the data hub&rsquo;s shared governance means that all partners own an equal stake and retain control over their data. And by effectively sharing data with everyone in the global anti-trafficking community, we are multiplying our ability to achieve our eventual goal: The end of human trafficking.Bill Peace is head of the Traffic Analysis Hub at STOP THE TRAFFIK. The Traffic Analysis Hub was enabled by an IBM Impact Grant.

Bill Peace, of the nonprofit STOP THE TRAFFIK, shares his strategies on disrupting human trafficking, a criminal industry that victimizes tens of millions of people worldwide.

Students with ADHD, dyslexia and other learning challenges often get inconsistent support in the classroom. IBM, Understood for All, and the National Center for Learning Disabilities are helping to change that.

Learning & attention issues get AI support

One in five children in the U.S. has a learning and attention issue.Students with dyslexia, ADHD, or other learning disabilities often receive inconsistent support in the classroom, which can lead to a lifetime of difficulties. Students with learning and attention issues are only half as likely as their peers to enroll in a four-year college. They are three times as likely as their peers to drop out of high school, 50 percent more likely to be involved in the criminal justice system, and twice as likely as their peers to be unemployed.However, when given the proper support, students with learning and attention issues can be just as successful as their peers.Understood for All and the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD), with support from IBM, worked with educators across the country to create math content designed to give teachers easy-to-use strategies that work for all students &#8212; but are especially effective for students with learning and attention issues.Most U.S. children with learning and attention issues spend at least 80 percent of their time in general-education classes. Inclusive classrooms have benefits, but these students often go without the individualized support they need to thrive. Tools such as Teacher Advisor can be a huge boon for teachers, who must meet the needs of all learners in their classrooms.Teacher Advisor is a free online resource that uses AI to quickly get educators the resources they need, saving them precious time in planning their lessons. More than 15,000 elementary and middle school teachers have embraced the platform since it launched in September 2017.

Using artificial intelligence to provide teachers with the right resources to best support students with learning and attention issues.

&ldquo;Teacher Advisor with Watson has made my transition to fourth and fifth grade enjoyable instead of intimidating. This school year, I am so excited to teach my students and learn alongside them.&rdquo;
&#8212; Ulana Ainsworth, special education teacher, Curtis Guild Elementary School in Boston, MA

Educators stay ahead of the class with online tool

After teaching kindergartners with learning disabilities for four years, I&rsquo;m now educating fourth and fifth graders from diverse backgrounds and with a range of learning styles.This is the kind of challenge I live for. But it’s also pushing me to get up to speed quickly on grade-level subjects I’ll be teaching for the first time &#8212; especially elementary math.Having to transition from teaching basic numbers to helping students understand things such as fractions can be difficult and overwhelming. Fortunately, a new free tool by the IBM Foundation called <a href="http://teacheradvisor.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Teacher Advisor With Watson</a> has helped me make this adjustment. It&rsquo;s simple, easy to use and saves me a ton of time.I first used the tool to understand fourth and fifth grade math standards. When students enter a grade level, some might be ahead, some might be behind, and some might be right in the middle. That&rsquo;s the trickiest part of teaching &#8212; understanding where kids are coming from and helping them move forward.Teacher Advisor generates plentiful activities, lessons and strategies to fit a range of student abilities and learning styles. I can type in what I&rsquo;m looking for and it instantly brings up resources. And the quality of the content is strong. Typically, it takes a lot of research to make sure your lessons work for all students, but Teacher Advisor generates instruction guidelines and shows lots of activities and videos to make the lessons more interactive.One of the most important things I&rsquo;ve learned as a teacher is to adapt lessons to the students. The part that I like most about this online platform is that I can break apart the standard, the content or the lesson to make sure I&rsquo;m serving the needs of each and every child in my classroom. I can find fun, engaging methods to help students who may initially have trouble comprehending a lesson. I can also search by concept and easily move across grade levels, making the tool useful for new and veteran teachers.Before Teacher Advisor, I spent so much of my nights and weekends searching online for lesson plans, or checking sources across various websites. Now I just go to Teacher Advisor, type in the math concept I&rsquo;m looking for, and I have complete, credible resources at my fingertips.Now that I&rsquo;m using this tool, I can&rsquo;t imagine going back to teaching without it. It has streamlined a process for me that used to take hours down to minutes.Teacher Advisor with Watson has made my transition to fourth and fifth grade enjoyable instead of intimidating. This school year, I am so excited to teach my students and learn alongside them.Ulana Ainsworth is a special education teacher at Curtis Guild Elementary School in Boston, MA.

IBM&rsquo;s Teacher Advisor helps a special education teacher make the leap to teaching 4th and 5th graders

Call for Code is a global initiative that gives developers everywhere access to open-source technologies from IBM such as AI, cloud, blockchain, and more to create ways to ease the impact of natural disasters.

Fostering solutions to ease impact of disasters

What many see as obstacles can be opportunities for software developers.To inspire developers around the world to help address global problems, the Call for Code Global Initiative was launched in May 2018. The goal was to find solutions to ease the impact of natural disasters.In 2018 alone, IBM hosted more than 300 hackathons and events in 50 cities internationally. More than 100,000 developers from 156 nations took part, building more than 2,500 applications.The top prize of $200,000 went to the team that created Project OWL, an AI&#8211;powered Wi&#8211;Fi network that can be set up in disaster areas to connect victims and first responders. The winners also received support from the IBM Service Corps to turn their idea into a reality with a field test in areas of Puerto Rico heavily damaged by Hurricane Maria.Solutions from other finalists ranged from using AI to speed up the rebuilding process following an earthquake to providing firefighters live data through sensors during wildfires.Developers taking part in Call for Code can use IBM platforms to join a like&#8211;minded community, meet experts, brainstorm ideas, and find teams to join.&ldquo;When we talk about the three pillars of how we&rsquo;re engaging with developers and large companies, it&rsquo;s around code, it&rsquo;s around content, and the last pillar is around community,&rdquo; says Willie Tejada, IBM general manager of developer advocacy.Call for Code earned recognition as a world&#8211;changing idea for 2019 from Fast Company magazine.

The Call for Code encourages software developers around the world to create technology that can help with disaster relief efforts.

Project OWL is an emergency mobile Wi-Fi network that can be set up anywhere a disaster strikes. It links victims to emergency personnel so they know who needs what help where.

Using Wi-Fi &lsquo;ducks&rsquo; to help in natural disasters

A disaster can sever communications across communities, leaving stranded residents unable to call for help. First responders often struggle to figure out which areas need what assistance and how soon.Enter Project OWL, an emergency mobile Wi&#8211;Fi network that can be set up anywhere. It uses baseball&#8211;size, rubber&#8211;coated devices with mini&#8211;Wi&#8211;Fi relays inside. (Inspired by those yellow duck bath toys, they’re called &ldquo;ducks.&rdquo; A network of them is called a &ldquo;clusterduck.&rdquo;)In a large-scale emergency, drones or a plane can drop these devices over a broad area. People with smartphones or laptops can connect with them and send information to first responders, including their location, condition and needs.&ldquo;In the worst disasters, chaos and misinformation are pervasive,&rdquo; Bryan Knouse, co&#8211;founder and chief executive officer of Project OWL told Bloomberg in an interview. &ldquo;With better information and better analytics, you can get the resources you need to the places that need it most.&rdquo;The five members of Project OWL &#8212; short for Organization, Whereabouts, and Logistics &#8212; won IBM’s first Call for Code Global Challenge, which drew more than 100,000 developers from 156 countries to create open&#8211;source solutions to help in natural disasters.The prize was $200,000 and support from IBM Service Corps to make the idea real. In March 2019, backed by a IBM Service Corps team made up of an interdisciplinary team of experts from across IBM, the Project OWL technology was deployed and tested across areas of Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria two years before.The team set up mini&#8211;Wi&#8211;Fi relays on trees, signs, sand dunes, and cars to create a network covering a square mile. Testing in a hot, humid environment gave the team plenty of ideas to refine their system.&ldquo;My hope is that we are able to set up internet networks quickly at a low cost and that they work,&rdquo; Knouse said. &ldquo;It doesn’t have to be fancy, crazy military technology; part of what makes a solution profound is being simple and creative.&rdquo;

A mobile Wi-Fi network that’s easy to set up anywhere can be used to connect victims and first responders.

The Project OWL Pilot: Puerto Rico | Code and Response Deployment Feature

After Hurricane Florence battered North Carolina, a team of IBM experts arrived to look at how the state could better coordinate not only emergency responses, but all the donations and volunteer efforts.

Learning the lessons of Hurricane Florence

After Hurricane Florence slammed into North Carolina in 2018, the outpouring of help was tremendous. In the months afterward, more than 75,000 volunteers donated more than 1.7 million hours to help with the recovery.But in the aftermath any huge disaster, making the best use of all the volunteers and the deluge of donations can be an enormous challenge. As part of IBM&rsquo;s response to Hurricane Florence, a team of 12 IBM experts from six countries spent four weeks looking for better ways to coordinate emergency responses, donations, and volunteers.One idea was to better track the donations that pour into the state after disasters &#8211;&#8211; and getting those goods to those who need them. Web-based forms, for example, would allow volunteer organizations to make requests, donors to make offers, and organizations to register their warehouses to receive goods.The IBM team also recommended tracking the work of volunteers who sign up on the state&rsquo;s website and getting their feedback following their experiences. And a greater social media presence would make more people aware of volunteer opportunities. &ldquo;IBM stepped up in a big way,&rdquo; said Kristi Jones, chief of staff for Gov. Roy Cooper. &ldquo;It’s not enough to get through the storm, you want to learn through the storm.&rdquo;The look back offers improvements for not only North Carolina, but for any place preparing for a disaster.

Preparing for future disasters requires surveying past relief efforts.

IBM Service Corps USA4 spends a day of service in Lumberton, North Carolina volunteering with Baptists on Mission helping rebuild a home impacted by Hurricane Florence flooding.

In Ghana, girls and young women must overcome many barriers to get an education. An IBM Service Corps team helped develop a device that provides educational content in schools with limited or no Internet access, leveling the opportunities for all students.

Helping girls in Ghana get a better education

The government of Ghana is working to knock down the barriers that girls and young women face in getting an education.In 2016, a team from IBM&rsquo;s IBM Service Corps traveled to the country to offer program and technical support.Part of the team worked with a local company called TECHAiDE to understand the educational and infrastructure challenges facing students in rural areas.Out of that arose ASANKA, a mobile hotspot that delivers educational content in text, video and audio. It can support 20 or more wireless devices, offering a quick and inexpensive way to share content with schools that have limited or no internet access.School administrators can control, modify and update lessons based on students&rsquo; levels and learning styles. The device also collects data that can show how students are mastering concepts as they progress through the material.In 2019, 50 schools were using the devices, reaching 25,000 students.TECHAiDE&rsquo;s future plans include making the device solar powered for communities without electricity, making it more affordable, and making it searchable.&ldquo;The IBM Service Corps team&rsquo;s role in providing business strategy planning and product development support was invaluable in pushing this initiative forward,&rdquo; says Kafui Prebbie, CEO of TECHAide.

Providing educational content in schools with limited or no access to the internet.

Peruvian women have one of the highest rates of cervical cancer in the world. Team members from IBM&rsquo;s Service Corps helped CerviCusco, a non&#8211;profit organization, advance their mission to provide affordable care and conduct outreach programs.

Thwarting cervical cancer in&nbsp;Peru

Peruvian women have one of the highest rates of cervical cancer in the world, even though it&rsquo;s largely preventable. This is especially true for women who live in isolated mountain regions, where many lack the money and means to get medical care.CerviCusco, a non&#8211;profit organization, strives to provide affordable care, conduct outreach programs, and do research in Peru. But it needed help to serve more women. Team members from IBM&rsquo;s IBM Service Corps and Becton Dickinson, a U.S. medical technology company, stepped in. They helped CerviCusco to develop a business sustainability plan, which included creating more commercial services to help fund and expand free services.They also provided a plan to not only help reach more women and boost its operating income, but to work toward becoming a center for research on cervical cancer.

Working with CerviCusco to help its multi-pronged efforts against cervical cancer.

IBM Service Corps: Cusco, Peru

COVID-19 is a disease caused by SARS-CoV2, a virus of the coronavirus family. These viruses cause can cause serious diseases that affect mainly the human respiratory system and potentially other major organs. You and your computer can help scientists at Scripps Research find potential treatments.

World Community Grid joins the fight against COVID-19

IBM’s World Community Grid crowdsources surplus computing power that uses it for scientific research. World Community Grid is being deployed in the fight against COVID-19, with an important project from Scripps Research called “OpenPandemics – COVID-19.”

Help stop COVID-19 in its tracks

The research team wants not only to help find treatments for COVID-19, but also to create a fast-response, open source toolkit that will help all scientists quickly search for treatments for future pandemics. And in keeping with World Community GridZZs open data policy, all data and tools that are developed through this project will be shared freely in the scientific community.The project’s primary goal is to search for potential treatments for COVID-19, so studying proteins from SARS-CoV2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) is the highest priority.

A research team in Japan tapped World Community Grid to search for treatments for neuroblastoma, a common childhood cancer. Volunteers&rsquo; donated computing power screened more than 3 million drug possibilities, uncovering seven drug candidates that show potential.

Volunteers aid hunt for childhood cancer treatment

Neuroblastoma is one of the most common cancers among children, after leukemia and brain and spinal cancers. It&rsquo;s responsible for about 15 percent of cancer deaths in children.Researchers already know that in aggressive neuroblastomas, there are three proteins that appear at high levels or are abnormally mutated. Finding ways to disable these proteins could lead to better success rates in curing neuroblastoma.A research team at the Chiba Cancer Center in Japan decided to take on this challenge. But there were millions of potential drug molecules to examine, making it impossible to synthesize and test each one in a lab.So the researchers partnered with World Community Grid to use computer-based modeling on a massive scale to search for new drugs. More than 200,000 volunteers around the world contributed their spare computing power to help out. Their assistance allowed researchers to screen 3 million molecules in just two years &#8212; a process that would have taken more than 55,000 years on a single computer.They discovered seven potential drugs that work by activating a self-destruct mechanism in neuroblastoma cells, killing them without affecting healthy cells. Follow-up testing in the lab found that these drug candidates are highly effective at destroying neuroblastoma tumors in mice, even at very low dosages, with no immediately apparent side effects. The findings may also have implications for treating adult cancers.The researchers hope that further development and testing will lead to an approved treatment for neuroblastoma.The project&rsquo;s lead scientist also created an international team of researchers to look for drug candidates for other types of childhood cancers using World Community Grid, an effort called Smash Childhood Cancer.To join World Community Grid, visit <a href="https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/discover.action/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.worldcommunitygrid.org.</a>

A research team in Japan tapped World Community Grid to seek better treatments for neuroblastoma, a common childhood cancer.

Smash Childhood Cancer

Making water safe to drink is often too expensive for many communities around the world. A research team is using the  World Community Grid to examine how carbon nanotubes could be used to filter water inexpensively.

Tapping nanotechnology to clean water cheaply

More than 840 million people don’t have access to safe drinking water. Every two minutes, a child dies from a water-related disease.Existing technologies to filter water are often complex or expensive, putting them beyond the reach of many communities. A Tsinghua University research team used the massive computing power donated by World Community Grid volunteers to understand the potential of using carbon nanotubes to make water filters that are efficient and affordable.Carbon nanotubes are one-atom-thick sheets of carbon, called graphene, rolled into tiny tubes. The tubes allow water molecules to pass through, but block many pathogens and contaminants, purifying the water. The tubes are so small that scientists initially expected that water would move through them too slowly to be of practical use. But early experiments showed that water sometimes flows more easily than expected. Increased flow could mean a more efficient filter.A lack of computing power limited scientists&rsquo; ability to understand what those initial experiments hinted at.By running massive computer simulations on World Community Grid, researchers discovered that certain kinds of natural vibrations called phonons, under specific conditions, can lead to a 300 percent increase in water diffusion through carbon nanotubes. Since these tiny vibrations occur naturally, no extra energy is needed.If lab experiments confirm these simulations, more efficient filters could help improve access to clean water for millions of people worldwide. They may also lead to a less expensive method for desalinating water, which could also help ease the thirst for clean water.To join World Community Grid, visit <a href="https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/discover.action" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.worldcommunitygrid.org.</a>

World Community Grid helped researchers find a way to filter water more efficiently, which is crucial for those who lack access to clean drinking water.

Some scientists are working to learn more about the trillions of bacteria that live in each of us to better treat such diseases as Type 1 diabetes, Crohn&rsquo;s disease and ulcerative colitis. Their effort, the Microbiome Immunity Project, relies heavily on the computing power donated by those linked to World Community Grid.

Unlocking secrets of the human microbiome

The Microbiome Immunity Project is the first large-scale, comprehensive study of the bacteria that live inside all of us.Each of us harbor as many as 30 trillion bacteria, most of which live in our digestive system. Most of these bacteria are harmless or even beneficial to our health. However, some are linked to conditions such as Type 1 diabetes, Crohn&rsquo;s disease, and ulcerative colitis.Scientists want to understand how our gut microbiome influences the onset and development of disease. That&rsquo;s why a group of researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, University of California San Diego, and the Simons Foundation&rsquo;s Flatiron Institute created the Microbiome Immunity Project.The project is focusing on the proteins in the bacteria found in our gut, which is an enormous undertaking since the gut microbiome contains about 3 million unique bacterial genes. (The human body, by comparison, has about 20,000 genes.)Scientists want to study these proteins in order to understand their different functions. Then researchers can explore how all these proteins interact with one another, and which proteins might play a role in various diseases.Researchers didn&rsquo;t have anywhere near the amount of computing power needed to tackle such work, so they enlisted the help of volunteers from all over the world to donate unused power from their own computers.These volunteers are part of World Community Grid, which harnesses unused processing power on their computers to run simulated experiments on behalf of scientists who are conducting humanitarian research. Researchers then analyze these simulations to find the most likely structure for each of the proteins in the microbiome.Eventually, the results can help scientists get closer to finding better ways to treat diseases affected by our microbiome.To join World Community Grid, visit <a href="https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/discover.action/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.worldcommunitygrid.org.</a>

Researchers hope to learn more about the trillions of bacteria that live in each of us so we can better treat such diseases as Type 1 diabetes, Crohn&rsquo;s disease and ulcerative colitis.

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