Gilbert S. Omenn, MD, PhD

Center for Computational Medicine &Bioinformatics, University of Michigan

AAAS Symposium on Innovations in Reducing International Knowledge Isolation

Saturday, 18 February, 2012

Harvesting and Disseminating Academic Knowledge: the Global Health and Science

Supercourse

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

Nelson

Mandela

There are generally delays of years in moving new knowledge to textbooks and classrooms.

A close relationship between higher education and advanced research is a hallmark of countries with economic progress.

There is a tension between specialized individual research and the need for multidisciplinary team research on grand challenges (see SCIENCE 12/15/06)

Busy teachers need assistance in building teaching materials/lectures for their own use.

The Need for Science Education Globally

A resource of 5100 powerpoint lectures, freely available, with 45 mirror sites

Organized by topic and in sets---70 Nobel laureates; 39 IOM, 55 NAS, 200 Amer Epid Soc members, NIH scientists.

Can be used intact (hopefully with attribution), or individual slides, or information used to create original slides—all without charge or restrictions; lecture of the week.

Based at University of Pittsburgh: www.pitt.edu/~super1, WHO Collaborating Center.

Started as Epidemiology Supercourse by Ronald Laporte (ronlaporte@aol.com) with Faina Linkov & Eugene Shubnikov, with NASA and NLM funding.

Supercourse: Epidemiology, the Internet, Global Health

Eric R. Kandel (2000)

Paul C Lauterbur (2003)

Gunter Blobel(1999)

Paul Greengard (2000)

Baruch S. Blumberg(1976)

Leland H Hartwell (2001)

Joshua Lederberg

(1958)

Nobel Prize Laureates in the Supercourse (Medicine)

Ferid Murad(1998)

A repository of lectures on global health and disaster mitigation, with a network of 65,000 scientists in 174 countries. Estimated 75-100 million hits/year.

During 2011, Supercourse lectures were used to teach an estimated 1 million students; the H1N1 influenza lecture was seen by 40 million people.

Hundreds of lectures translated into Chinese and Spanish; many translated into Arabic, Russian; original lectures contributed in 31 languages

153 published articles about various features of the Supercourse (see Publications)

Global Health Supercourse

Teaching a Million

Can we teach 1,000,000 people world wide with a single prevention lecture?

Open Source model---exemplary lectures, useful specific content and graphics, more efficient preparation

Statistical Quality Assurance—Deming model Support for educators Multiple languages Just-in-Time Lectures: within 48 hrs after major

disasters—Hurricane Rita, Tsunami, H1N1, Haiti earthquake

20,000 Supercourse CDs distributed British Medical Assn textbooks provided

Features of the Supercourse

Starting Central Asia Supercourse (USAID)—capacity-building; 60, now 217 members in the five countries.

Establishing a scientific journal for central Asia and a global health online journal for Latin America

Additional mirror site in Stavropol, Russia Initiatives in 2011: promoting the WHO definition that “Health

is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”; expanding Mobile Global Health; starting an Art Supercourse with the president of Turkmenistan and the Frick Gallery in Washington DC

Monthly Newsletter (13 Jan, 2012)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLnltG7c9tA

We Aim to Improve Science Education

Worldwide

Question:

Answer:

Obtain & Share Powerpoint Lectures

Science SupercourseThe Science Supercourse is designed to expand beyond the topics of Health and Preventive Medicine, to encompass other areas of science, namely Environment, Agriculture, and Computer Engineering in addition to Global Public Health.

The project is an extended joint endeavor between the Library of Alexandria in Egypt and the WHO Collaborating Centre at the University of Pittsburgh. Launched in 2009, Science Supercourse has over 100,000 lectures.

Science Supercourse site

Vint Cerf, Google/Father of the Internet

Ismail Sergeldin, DirectorLibrary of Alexandria

Advisory Board

Ron LaPorte, Supercourse Founder

Gil Omenn, Univ of Michigan, former AAAS president

Computer Eng’g (17 categories): 51,379 lectures Agriculture (17 categories): 78,536 lectures Environment (16 categories): 26,830 lectures

http://ssc.bibalex.org

Submit your own lectures or nominate those you think most compelling and useful.

Current Status of Science Supercourse

InnoCentive: “Where the world innovates”, a crowd-sourcing pioneer [Disclosure: I am a member of SAB]

Specific, well-formulated Challenges and a community of millions of Problem Solvers connected through a cloud-based technology program

Illustrated by Judith Rodin, president of The Rockefeller Foundation, in 2010 AAAS plenary lecture—applying InnoCentive to mitigation of global climate change.

Numerous small and large Challenges. Opportunities for individuals or teams to respond.

Moving from Knowledge to Problem-Solving: InnoCentive Innovation