This Week in Partnership News: 3 Noteworthy Cross-Sector Partnerships

States partner to get girls interested in cyber, it 

Govtech

The SANS Institute, the cooperative research and education organization that trains security professionals around the world, piloted CyberStart in seven states last summer. The overall response was striking: participation was more than triple than expected. The only problem: only around 5 percent of the participants were women. The organization kicked off a new online program to counter this trend: Girls Go CyberStart, a free online pilot that’s dramatically similar to CyberStart but geared toward female high school students.

WHY IT MATTERS: The SANS Institute recognized the gender disparity within their participation rates, which mirrors the larger-scale gender disparity within IT. Their initiative is directly addressing this inequality and making an effort to even it out by encouraging girls to explore the field of cybersecurity from a young age.

Fujitsu Laboratories and MIT’s Center for Brains, Minds and Machines Broaden Partnership

mit

Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. and MIT’s Center for Brains, Minds and Machines (CBMM) have announced a multi-year philanthropic partnership focused on expanding and advancing the science and engineering of intelligence. Fujitsu Laboratories has conducted a wide range of basic and applied research in the areas of next-generation services, computer servers, networks, and electronic devices. CBMM, a multi-institutional, National Science Foundation funded science and technology center focuses on the interdisciplinary study of intelligence. The new Fujitsu Laboratories Co-Creation Research Fund will fuel new, innovative and challenging projects in areas of interest to both Fujitsu and CBMM.

WHY IT MATTERS:  Partnerships within academia are crucial in supporting the next generation of experts and researchers in a new, emerging field.

BlackBerry Unveils Blockchain Partnership to Support Medical Research

Coindesk

BlackBerry, the software company and former cellphone maker, announced its plans for a new blockchain platform aimed at sharing and storing medical data. The company said in a press release that it would use its “carrier-grade network operation center” to support the digital ledger, which would be developed by biotech incubator ONEBIO. The ledger would specifically be used to securely store data from patients, labs, and monitors.

WHY IT MATTERS: This partnership goes to show the diversity of function that blockchain can provide. This emerging and groundbreaking field allows firms to venture out of their respective industries to disrupt paradigms in other fields.