There are 6 academician team members including David Ho, Wang Chen, Zhong Nanshan, Li Song, Ding Jian and Zhang Boli in the scientific research personnel list.

Since we announced the donation of a RMB 100 million (USD 14.26 million) million on January 29 towards the support of R&D of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) treatment drugs and vaccines, we have signed contracts with many scientific research institutions such as the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Columbia University, Guangdong Zhong Nanshan Medical Foundation etc. Our partner institutions have formed an anti-COVID-19 scientific research group composed of top experts in many fields. At present, the total number of projects that we support has exceeded 10.

Beyond the 6 academics (David Ho, Wang Chen, Zhong Nanshan, Li Song, Ding Jian and Zhang Boli) serving as key scientific research personnel, group also includes representatives from the Chinese Academy of Science’s Life Science and Clinical Medicine teams. These teams cover many fields such as infectious disease, critical illness, respiratory disease, immunology, epidemiological, pharmaceutical chemistry, traditional Chinese and Western medicine, etc.

According to the agreement, each expert team will undertake an independent subject in combination with their fields of expertise, and carry out research on damage mechanism, clinical treatment, drug research and development, and the research and development of vaccines for COVID-19 to accelerate the breakthrough of the new key technology for the prevention and treatment of coronavirus.

Going forward, the foundation will also maintain communication with relevant expert teams according to the project’s progress and on-the-ground situation, and provide continuous support for related scientific research work.

Previously, Jack Ma said that he and Jack Ma Foundation would do their best to provide more help towards the development and accumulation of medical science.

In addition, Alibaba Cloud has joined the scientific research team to help fight against COVID-19. It will provide AI computing power to the above scientific research teams, to support drug screening, new drug research and development, virus gene sequencing, protein screening among others and will also provide technical support for related scientific research work with the goal of shortening the research and development cycle.

In the future, Alibaba Cloud Computing also plans to discuss relevant in-depth technical support cooperation with various protocol partners on the construction of: a big-data enabled national respiratory disease intelligent early warning system, a cloud-based research platform focused on infectious respiratory system diseases, and an open collaborative information-sharing system for respiratory disease treatment research and best-practices to improve the efficiency of disease early warning and information transmission.