Session 8: Bridging Generations and Scientific Disciplines in Pandemic-fueled Innovations: Learning from the COVID-19 pandemic experience

The COVID-19 pandemic has been an unprecedentedly brutal and rare threat to humans, challenging our existence at all levels, from personal, familial, societal and global. In return, the human instinct to survive created varied and sometimes untraditional responses as a push-back against the ferocity of the pandemic. Among these was the power of coordinated collaborations from diverse human resources in producing needed solutions. They included outputs of human resources with different talents, often from different disciplines and even from different generations. This conference panel session will look at how the pandemic successfully fueled innovations, often from unlikely partners. The discussion will include specific local case examples such as the University of Philippines Surgical Innovation Biomedical Laboratory (UP-SIBOL), the Rwanda Science Advisory Group (SAG) and Save our Neighborhood (SON) activities. It will also discuss the important roles played during the pandemic, by modern technology such as the internet of things (IOT), by the media and information sharing, both at global and local level. The main output of the discussion will be to isolate and share lessons that can be drawn from the COVID-19 experience.

Primary session organizer: Nathaniel Orillaza Jr., National Academy of Science and Technology Philippines and Manasse Mbonye, Rwanda Academy of Sciences

To attend online, register at https://nasem.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_2T_qNKgtTdWb794BHxtxgA.