The Ministry of Science and Technology on Thursday announced that it would be accepting applications for projects that would help COVID-19 prevention efforts, find a cure or otherwise benefit the public as a whole.
Approved projects would be able to utilize the computational powers of the National Center for High Performance Computing, the ministry said, adding that projects whose results would be immediately applicable would be prioritized.
Projects to investigate the genetic evolution of viruses, protein analysis, data mining or image recognition could all apply, it said.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
Projects that would produce results beneficial to the public, such as maps for masks, maps for medical-grade isopropyl alcohol and other information on necessary goods would also be accepted, it added.
Aside from the center’s supercomputer, storage facilities and virtual servers being made available, the center said that it would also make available data sets that have been collected by the government’s big data analysis tools.
The data sets contain information across different fields — government management, scientific research, linguistic data, medical and security, it said.
All academic medical theses, global COVID-19 imagery, and National Health Insurance data on mask provision and storage would be made available to the successful applicants, it added.
Minister of Science and Technology Chen Liang-gee (陳良基) said the program aims to be a step toward using technology to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
National Applied Research Laboratories president Wang Yeong-her (王永和) said that the center, which is key to supporting domestic development of biomedicine and other advances, is a welcome addition to the nation’s disease prevention efforts.
The ministry is accepting applications until June 30, although it is possible the program would be extended, it said.
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