C3.ai Announces COVID-19 Grand Challenge Winners
C3.ai, a leading enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) software provider for accelerating digital transformation, today announced the winners of the C3.ai™ COVID-19 Grand Challenge. Launched on Sept. 15, the global competition encouraged developers, data scientists, students, and creative minds to build world-class data science techniques and strategies that accelerate novel COVID-19 research and drive smart and safe decision-making. The C3.ai COVID-19 Grand Challenge represents an opportunity to inform decision makers at the local, state, and federal levels and transform the way the world confronts this pandemic.
After a rigorous review process, the judging panel selected seven research projects for recognition. Judges assessed how well the entries leveraged data science techniques to derive insights that were not apparent before. The judges selected submissions that were most likely to unlock significant public health and economic benefits.
A total of $200,000 in cash prizes will be awarded to these research teams. Each has developed meaningful data-driven insights that will help the global community understand and mitigate not only the spread of COVID-19, but also prepare the world to fight future pandemics, improve the medical community’s ability to respond, and help policymakers navigate decisions about COVID-19.
C3.ai Grand Challenge Award Winners:
Grand Prize - $100,000
- Combined Diagnostics - Modeling Population Heterogeneity and Personalized COVID Diagnostics. Predicts an individual’s infectious and susceptibility status and probability of having COVID-19. The team applied the Bayesian Stochastic Expectation-Maximization method to demographics, individual health characteristics, and behavioral and geographical data to provide personalized estimates for each individual’s infectious and susceptibility statuses. (Freddy Bunbury - Carnegie Institution for Science, Nina Miolane - University of California, Santa Barbara, and Claire Donnat - University of Chicago)
“Any return to normality relies on accurately determining who might have COVID-19. Demographics, individual health characteristics, and behavioral and geographical data considerably alter one’s risk of catching, suffering from, and spreading the virus,” said Freddy Bunbury, post-doctoral researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science. “Knowing this, we developed a machine learning model that is reactive, granular, and even personalized to help individuals, and – by extension – society, compute with greater accuracy the probability of having COVID-19. By intelligently combining these disparate data sources, we aim to more robustly capture people’s individual likelihood of having and spreading the disease, reduce false test results, and inform disease transmission models.”
“This project has huge potential to make an immediate impact on the pandemic with its approach to generating meaningful results from COVID testing,” said Thomas M. Siebel, CEO of C3.ai. “This is an unprecedented opportunity to apply informed decision-making based on data to enable daily life and business operations to continue, while effectively managing health risks.”
Second-Place Awards - $25,000 each
- DeepOutbreak: Framework for Forecasting Dynamics of COVID-19 and Co-Evolving Diseases. Models the progression of COVID-19 and symptomatically similar co-evolving influenza-like illnesses, as well as hospitalization and mortality rates. Designed to optimize healthcare deployment, which is especially important with hospitalizations resurging and healthcare workers increasingly becoming ill. (Alexander Rodriguez, Nikhil Muralidhar, Bijaya Adhikari, Naren Ramakrishnan, and B. Aditya Prakash - U.S.)
- Assessing Conservation Level of Therapeutic and Vaccine Targets of COVID-19. Predicts the effectiveness of vaccines and therapeutics by genome sequences and prioritizes relevant treatments to inform drug and vaccine development. (Yuanfang Guan and Manqi Zhou - U.S.)
Third-Place Awards - $12,500 each
- Analysis of COVID-19 Policies’ Impact on the Population and the Economy . Calculates the impact of government policies on COVID-19 infection rates, stock prices, and a population’s mobility to inform governments about how policies affect people and the economy. (Niti Wattanasirichaigoon, Napat Ratanakul, and Apiwat Jaroonpol - U.S., Singapore, and Japan)
- COVIDProf: An Intelligent Q&A Chatbot Tuned to Deliver Scientific Research and Data Related to COVID-19 in Natural Language. Makes finding and understanding relevant COVID-19 scientific research and data easier for the average person through an intelligent Q&A chatbot. (Varsha Rao and Joy Yeh - Singapore and Japan)
- Structural Modeling of COVID Spread in Relation to Human Mobility . Models causal relationships between human mobility indicators (trips, distance traveled, staying at home, and social distancing) and COVID-19 spread to inform how policymakers should take action. (Rezwana Rafiq, Tanjeeb Ahmed, and Md Yusuf Sarwar Uddin - U.S.)
- The Center on Stochastic Modeling, Optimization, and Statistics (COSMOS) COVID -19 Linear Programming. Online tool for reopening communities that enables decision makers to study hypothetical scenarios to inform planning and protect high-risk individuals. (Victoria Chen, Yuan Zhou, Nilabh Ohol, Alireza Fallahi, and Amith Viswanatha - U.S.)
Award Criteria
The projects were reviewed on the basis of their scientific merit, the use of AI, machine learning, and/or other data science techniques in the project, and the incorporation of at least two data sources from the C3 AI® COVID-19 Data Lake.
The evaluation process also considered the extent to which the derived data science insights, if implemented at scale, will result in significant public health and economic benefit.
To learn more about the C3.ai COVID-19 Grand Challenge, please visit https://c3.ai/c3-ai-covid-19-grand-challenge/.
About C3.ai
C3.ai is a leading AI software provider for accelerating digital transformation. C3.ai delivers the C3 AI Suite for developing, deploying, and operating large-scale AI, predictive analytics, and IoT applications in addition to an increasingly broad portfolio of turnkey AI applications. The core of the C3.ai offering is a proprietary, model-driven AI architecture that dramatically enhances data science and application development.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201208005727/en/
Contact information
Lisa Kennedy
415-914-8336
pr@c3.ai
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Sisvel Launches Wi-Fi Multimode Patent Pool22.1.2026 13:00:00 EET | Press release
Sisvel has launched a groundbreaking Wi-Fi Multimode patent pool offering access to standard essential patents owned by 10 Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 technology leaders. As the successor to Sisvel’s highly successful Wi-Fi 6 patent pool – which, over a three-year period, closed agreements with nearly 40 companies, including Acer, Netgear, Cisco and HP – the new programme offers an efficient way to access essential Wi-Fi rights for years to come. The 10 founding patent owners in the Wi-Fi Multimode programme are Huawei, KPN, Mitsubishi Electric, Orange, Panasonic, Philips, Aegis 11 SA (a Sisvel affiliate), SK Telecom, Wilus and ZTE. In addition, Sony Group Corporation has taken a licence under the Wi-Fi Multimode programme. This early agreement with a sophisticated and globally recognised Wi-Fi leader and implementer underlines the pool’s strong value proposition and the efforts made by Sisvel to engage with all parts of the market during pool formation. Giorgia Varvelli has been named Wi-Fi M
SINOVAC Announces Nasdaq Hearings Panel Grants Continued Listing22.1.2026 13:00:00 EET | Press release
Sinovac Biotech Ltd. (Nasdaq: SVA) (“SINOVAC” or the “Company”), a leading provider of biopharmaceutical products in China, today announced that the Nasdaq Hearings Panel (the “Panel”) has granted the Company’s request to continue its listing on the Nasdaq Stock Market, subject to stated conditions focused on timely completion of its financial audit and remediation of filing delinquencies. Under the Panel’s decision, SINOVAC must, on or before May 11, 2026, demonstrate compliance with Nasdaq Listing Rule 5250(c)(1) and Listing Rule 5250(c)(2) by completing filings of its annual report for the year ended December 31, 2024 on Form 20-F and an interim balance sheet and income statement as of the end of its second quarter of year 2025 on Form 6-K. As disclosed on January 4, 2026, the Company has engaged Zhonghua Certified Public Accountants LLP (“Zhonghua”) as its independent registered public accounting firm. SINOVAC is working diligently with Zhonghua to complete the required audit and t
Otto Group Enables AI-driven Intelligent Robot Coordination With the Digital Twin Developed by Roboverse Reply22.1.2026 12:52:00 EET | Press release
Reply [EXM, STAR: REY] is supporting the global retailer Otto Group in implementing a central, AI-driven virtual control system for intelligent robotic orchestration. Developed as part of a strategic collaboration between Otto Group, Reply, and NVIDIA, the "Robotic Coordination Layer" enables the training, simulation, and orchestration of autonomous mobile robots and stationary systems, accelerating delivery times and enhancing service levels This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260122331989/en/ This initiative with the Otto Group and NVIDIA underscores Roboverse Reply’s role as an implementation partner for AI-powered robotics and Physical AI in logistics. At the centre is a high-fidelity digital twin, serving as a precise replica of the warehouse environment and accurately representing the positions, movements, and interactions of all robotic systems. Developed thanks to Roboverse Reply’s expertise in robotic int
Bureau Veritas Named Accredited EcoVadis Consulting Partner22.1.2026 12:30:00 EET | Press release
Bureau Veritas, a global leader in Testing, Inspection, and Certification services (TIC), has been named as an Accredited Consulting Partner by EcoVadis, the global standard for resilient, sustainable supply chains. Accredited Consulting Partners are formally equipped to help businesses complete sustainability assessments, review scores, and improve Environment, Labor and Human Rights, Ethics, and Sustainable Procurement practices. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260122971773/en/ Accredited Consulting Partners are carefully selected based on their experience and expertise and must complete rigorous training on EcoVadis’ methodology and assessment process through the EcoVadis Academy. To qualify, partners must demonstrate a deep understanding of local environmental, ethical and human rights regulations and issues, and have completed the EcoVadis assessment for their own business. “Becoming an EcoVadis Accredite
Nordic Firms Seek Sovereign Clouds for Compliant Modernization22.1.2026 11:00:00 EET | Press release
The multi public cloud services market in the Nordics has entered a defining phase as enterprises shift from selective use of the cloud to comprehensive, compliance-driven and AI-native multicloud operating models, according to a new research report published today by Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III), a global AI-centered technology research and advisory firm. The 2025 ISG Provider Lens® Multi Public Cloud Services report for the Nordics finds that cloud adoption across the region has moved beyond basic workload migration as companies embrace sovereign cloud models that guarantee jurisdictional control and encryption frameworks. This change reflects the impact of tightening EU regulatory frameworks that require data residency, transparency and responsible AI adoption in regulated industries and the public sector. As a result, enterprises are building compliant cloud environments that support AI-enabled modernization initiatives. “The Nordics has emerged as one of Europe’s
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom