Laura Rosella receives funding injection from Connaught Fund
July 20/2018
Laura Rosella, associate professor of epidemiology at DLSPH, is receiving $250,000 to launch a
Prof Laura Rosella
global network to advance innovative research and training in predictive analytics to address pressing global population health challenges. Her project is one of four University of Toronto projects sharing almost $1 million in funding from this year’s Connaught Global Challenge Award.
Her project involves a multidisciplinary team that will create two innovation hubs. One hub will develop and test artificial intelligence, or AI, approaches for population risk prediction and integrate these predictive models into health decision-making. The second team will focus on how best to integrate this knowledge using prescriptive analytics.
The team includes U of T researchers Ajay Agrawal and Avi Goldfarb, Rotman School of Management; Timothy Chan and Scott Sanner, department of mechanical and industrial engineering; and Anna Goldenberg, department of computer science, as well as the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and the Vector Institute.
The internal award, funded by the Connaught Fund, supports new collaborations involving leading U of T researchers and students from multiple disciplines, along with innovators and thought leaders from other sectors.
The Connaught funding will help these programs get off the ground and boost efforts to find external funding to further develop solutions to global challenges, as well as create new research-oriented academic programs.
“The Connaught Global Challenge Award is unique,” said Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation. “It fosters cross-disciplinary research, harnessing the university’s incredible depth and breadth of expertise to come up with truly innovative, groundbreaking solutions.
“Once again, we have been amazed by the tremendous creativity and desire of U of T’s scholars to work together to tackle some of the world’s most challenging and complicated global problems.”
To be considered for Connaught Global Challenge funding, global challenge teams must represent new collaborations involving leading U of T researchers and students from multiple disciplines, along with innovators and thought leaders from other sectors.
The application deadline for the next round of funding is Feb. 1, 2019.