After winning the Kuzneski Innovation Cup from the Innovation Institute for FRED (a Framework for Reconstructing Epidemiological Dynamics), a software platform that simulates the spread of disease, mitigation strategies, & policy implications, John Cordier assembled a team on short notice and lead them to victory in the Global Business Challenge (GBC), held in Brisbane, Australia.
Less than 24 hours before the deadline, Cordier was encouraged to apply for the GBC, an international competition of 134 teams from 25 countries to develop real, implementable solutions to a global business challenge. It is wasn't for the time difference between US and Australia, he would have missed the deadline. In that short time span, he assembled a multidisciplinary team of Pitt students in engineering, law and GSPIA, whose first time meeting was in the airport on the way to the competition!
less than 24 hours before the deadline
Seven finalist teams from around the world shared their solutions to the challenge of ‘smart cities’ at the fifth GBC graduate business case competition in Brisbane. The competition locked them in an apartment for 48 hours and gave them the problem, which was to come up with solutions for Brisbane being hit with a hurricane and, separately, an epidemic. They were to write a 50-page business plan and give a 20-minute presentation, followed by 20 minutes of questions.
On Cordier's 27th birthday he found out that he and his team won the Queensland Government Prize of $75,000 to support the commecialisaiton of their open-source agent-based modelling system for exploring the special and temporal patterns of epidemics (FRED). With this award, he now has a funded pilot-project, with a potential $1M second phase to use FRED to create a modeling and simulation system for Brisbane.
Read more about GBC and the 2018 winners...
10/25/2018