University of Edinburgh
With the help of Strategic Blue's cloud funding from AWS, we supported the University of Edinburgh through our Cloud Funding Program.
In December 2019, the first case of coronavirus (COVID-19) was reported to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Ten months later, it still presents a global problem which is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.
Strategic Blue and other involved partners, have introduced a Cloud Funding Program, to help continue the battle against COVID-19. The Cloud Funding Program has been designed to help two groups; researchers and those running community projects – particularly those in education. Strategic Blue’s aim is to provide a funded budget for your initial cloud costs and support to fast-track your cloud adoption. This enables groups who are working on projects to lessen the impact of COVID-19 to get up and running in the cloud, without having to wait for large funding applications to be approved.
Our funding helped The University of Edinburgh to provide insight into the impact of COVID-19
We developed a strong relationship with the University of Edinburgh

Challenge
Results
Solution
The work of Professor Rowland Kao and the research team has helped provide insight into the impact of COVID-19 on wastewater treatment sites, as fragments of the Virus’s genetic material could be identified in human waste. Crucially, virus fragments can be detected even when there are only asymptomatic COVID-19 cases in the community. This has helped local governments track the success of lockdown measures during the first wave.
These types of simulations and analysis have proved invaluable over the past ten months, and with Scotland and the UK entering the second lockdown, models such as these provide the necessary lessons learnt. This fantastic, on-going work has been recognised in two BBC programmes, which Professor Kao and his team contributed to, one of which was recently nominated for a Scottish BAFTA. Strategic Blue is proud to be involved in such projects, and to have provided the initial funding that this model needed to be developed at the University of Edinburgh. Strategic Blue continues to support Professor Kao and other research projects throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, in the hope of overcoming these uncertain times.
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