>>from around the globe. It's the queue with digital coverage of AWS Public sector online brought to you by Amazon Web services. Welcome back. I'm stew minimum. And this is the Cube coverage of Amazon Web service Public sectors, online summit Always love. We have phenomenal practitioner discussion. Of course, public sector includes both government agencies, universities, education, broad swath, you know, inside that ecosystem and some really, you know, important and timely discussion we're having. Of course, with the global pandemic Kobe 19 happening. I'm really happy to welcome to the program Wei Li, who is a PhD and principal investigator as well as an assistant professor both Children National Research Institute associated with George Washington University way Thank you so much for joining us. >>Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. We're here. >>Alright. Why don't we start with Ah, give us a little bit of you know, your research focus in general. And you know what projects it is that you're working on these days? Yeah, >>sure. So, yeah, so hello, everyone. So our laboratory is many interested in using computational biology and jim editing approaches to understand human genome and human disease. And we're particularly interesting in one gene editing technology will be called CRISPR screening. So this is a fascinating, high for proven technology because it tells you whether one doctor 20,000 human genes are connected with some certain pieces fit in type in one single experiment. So in the possibly developed some of the widely used every reasons to analyze the swimming data has been downloaded off by over 60,000 times. So it's really popular, and right now there are a couple of going projects. But basically we are trying to, for example, problem in machine learning and data mining approaches to find new clues of human disease from the original mix and screening big data on. We also collaborated with a lot of blacks around the world and to use this technology to use this technology to find new cures and drugs for cancer and other decisions. So this is the basic all the way off our current research programmes. Interns off the Conradi 19 research. I think one of the major projects we are having is that, um, we noticed that Christmas winning and other similar screening methods has been widely used in many years. Many research adapted to study waters infection. So in the past 10 years we have seen people you are using their Christmas screening and our AI suite, for example, to study HIV is a car wires, best bars, Western ire virus, Ebola influencers and also coronavirus. So that raises an interesting question from us if we collect all the screening data together. But these viruses, what a new information can we find that we cannot identify for the single study, for example, coe and identify new patterns or new human genes that are that are common in responsible for many different viruses? Type of all, we can find some genes that I work only for some certain people viruses so more well, we know that there are a lot of drugs that target different genes, and we are particularly interested in, for example, can repurpose some of these drugs to treat different hyper viruses, including Kobe, 18 19. So that's the one of the major profits off ongoing research, right and left ready to call the idea, writing So India. And we hope that we can find some new new Jim functions that after that that are broader, really essential for different hyper viruses. I also new drug targets that can potentially treat existing a new drug existing and new viruses, including compared to 19 >>Yeah, crisper. Shown a lot of promise is definitely a lot of excitement in the research community to be ableto work on this. You talked a little bit about, you know, big data, obviously a lot of computational power required to do some of the things you're talking about. Can you speak a little bit to the partnership between computer science and the medicine? How do you make sure on that? You know, there's that marrying of, you know, the people in the technology focus in the medical space. >>Yeah, so I think, Yeah, my my research background is actually from computer science. I call her on the grand graduates from their committed size. So I know a lot about some of the signs and have arisen. But right now it's quite interesting because our research for focus half on computer science and half on their medicine. So it's a complete heart experience, but it's really super was a super exciting to connect both women in science and medicine together. So I think most of the time we are focusing on the coding and the average analysis on. But at the same time, we also spent a lot of time like interpreting the results. In essence, we need a lot off. Yeah, knowledge from biology and medicine to make sense, to make our results since and interpret double in the end, we hope that our results can be They went into a son, for example, canonical, actionable solutions, including new drugs. >>Yeah, it's if you think about you know, the research space. You know, often you know its projects that you're taking months or years to investigate things for talking about the current code 19 pandemic. Of course, there's a critical need today for fast moving activities. So you know what? What are the outcomes from the cover? 19 aspects of of what you're working on. What are some of the outcomes that we might be able to help patients survivability and other things regarding, You know, this specific disease? >>Yeah, So I think there are two major are I would say there are two major benefits from their outcome of our research project. So the first the first thing is that we hope to find some genes that have that can be potentially drug targets. So if they are existing drug second heavily genes, then that would be perfect because we don't need to do anything. Apologies. We just need to try that. Extend existing drugs Toe cabinet is James and in the end, we hope that these drugs can have the broad on the wire. I would say the broad answer. Borrow activity. That means that and you leave, for example, if these drugs can be potentially used to treat Cooley 19 and sometimes in in several years later in the future if there's a new virus coming out. Hopefully they were doing like they're it's already the drugs that target known Gene. Hopefully, that's there were assume the noon numerous that never happened in something the future. But I hope that when the new risk is coming, we already have the new drugs to track it this way. Already have existing drugs to target these viruses, so that's one part and the alibis that way. We have, like, spend a lot of kind of, for example, collecting the genomics and screening data, and we are hoping that our research results can be freely accessible around the road by many different researchers in different laps. So that's why we are rely on AWS to build up there to process and to analyze the data as well as to, uh, to build up an integrated database and websites such that are the outcomes off our projects can be freely accessible around the world. Many other researchers. >>Yeah, great. I'm glad you connected the dots for us. For aws can you speak a little bit too? Obviously, Cloud has, you know, the ability for us to use, you know, nearly infinite computational capabilities. What's specific about AWS helps you along that project. Uh, let's start there. >>Yeah, So I think our AWS really helps us a lot because we developed on average and process their screening data actually takes, like, two or three days to Christmas one data. But if you were talking about, like, tens or hundreds or even thousands off the screen data existing, the high high performance cross team doesn't really help because it takes maybe years to finish. AWS provides, like flexible computing resources, especially the easy two instance that we can quickly deploy and process in military short amount of time. So our estimation is that we can reduce the amount of Time Media 2% to process the poverty Christmas. We need data from months to just a few days. So that's one part and the other guys that we are trying to build up the website and database, as I mentioned before, with which we host a large amount of data. And I think in that sense, AWS and the commuting instance as well as the AWS RDS service really helped us a lot because we don't need to worry too much about. There's a lot of the details of the after deployment off their database and the website. We just go ahead and use that as a service is really straightforward and save us a lot of kind of effort. >>Yeah, and you talk about the sharing of data. Information is so important, But of course it would, talking about medical data highly regulated. So you know what's important to the cloud to make sure that you can share with all the other researchers yet still make sure that there is the security and compliance that is required? >>Yeah, so yeah, that's a really good question. So right now, we don't really need to do if the patient information because all the data we get this from the public domain, it's It's both on the human sound lines, not on human patients. So we don't have their concerns about the privacy protections at this moment. But I think in the future, if you want to integrate genomics state our reach, this screen indeed A, which is already in my research plan. I think the highly secure AWS system actually really provided a really nice for us to do this job. >>Can you give us a little bit? Look forward as to where do you see this research going? What applicability is there before? What you're doing now? Both. You know, as this current pandemic plays out as well as applicability beyond Corp in 19. >>Yeah, sure, I think I think one of their major focus off our current, The company in 19 project is that we hope to find some drug targets tohave the broader under fire activity. So I think in the future, if they knew where it's coming out of the estimated locally in the 19 we hope that we are well prepared for that. I think in the future they're sharing as well as collateral cloud computing. You'll be becoming more and more important as you can see that most of us are working from home right now. So it's really critical to require us to have the platform toe accelerate accelerating sharing between research labs and around the world. And I think many different. I think aws provides this really nice preference for us to do this job well. >>Wei Li, thank you so much for sharing with our audience your updates, really important work. We wish your team the best of luck and hope that you also stay safe. >>Yeah, thank you so much. >>Alright, Stay with us for more coverage from AWS Public sector Summit online. I'm stew Minimum And thanks as always for watching the Cube >>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

>>from around the globe. It's the queue with digital coverage of AWS Public sector online brought to you by Amazon Web services. >>Hi, I'm stupid man. And this is the Cube's coverage of AWS Public Sectors Summit Online. We've done this show for many years. Of course, this this time it's online rather than in person in the District of Washington D. C Happy to welcome to the program First time guest. Very good partner of Aws is from Salesforce is Casey Coleman. She is the senior vice president of Global Government Solutions, together with sales work. Casey, thanks so much for joining us. >>Thank you. Glad to be here. >>All right. So first of all, maybe if you could give us a little bit of level set your role at Salesforce and obviously, you know, a long partnership with Amazon. Tell us a little bit about that. >>Yes. My role at Salesforce is to work with our customers in the public sector globally and really help them map out their digital transformation. You know, it's an ongoing journey and we help them understand how to how to break that down into actionable steps and really transformed what they're doing to serve their constituents and citizens better. >>Excellent. So it of course said that the public sector show a lot about the leverage of govcloud and the other services. All the compliance that goes into that ahead of this event you had Ah, new update at Salesforce in partnership with AWS. Talk to us about it's the government cloud plus s o. You know what's entailed there? Uh, and, uh, tell us how AWS and Salesforce work together to launch this solution. >>Yeah, thanks Do. We are so excited to announce the launch of govcloud Plus, which is sales force is a customer 3 60 crm platform that runs on Amazon Web services in the govcloud in their govcloud environment. And we've just received a provisional 80 0 provisional authority to operate from the FEDRAMP program office at the high security level. So we are announcing govcloud Plus is fed ramp. I'm ready to go generally available and ready for customers. >>Excellent. Maybe bring us inside. You know what's different about how government agencies leverage sales force most companies out there, You know, Salesforce is a critical piece off how they manage, you know, number one, they're salesforce marketing and lots of other pieces, anything specific that we should understand about the public sector. >>Yeah, it's a great question because even our name Salesforce sounds like a commercial kind of thing to do. Governments don't think of themselves as selling, but if you break down to a level of detail about what governments actually do, it is the same kind of functions case management, its benefits delivery. It's communications and outreach. It's all the same kind of function that are necessary for commercial organizations to drive. And so that's what we do. We translate that into government ready terms so that they can serve child welfare, health information delivery record, former information, all kinds of services for the constituents of the public sector. And they might call them customers. They might call them citizens, residents constituent. But it's those they >>Yeah, well, what one of the things about Salesforce is, as you said, it's not just, you know, a sales tool. There's so much you've got a very broad and deep ecosystem. Their asses Well, as you know, people that know how to use it, they get underneath the covers. You know, when I think of not only a sales force. You know, the first company that I probably thought of and heard about that it was SAS. But if you talk about the AP economy, if you talk about how things integrate, Salesforce does a lot for developers. So I know one of the other pieces you had. There's everybody knows Dream Force. Maybe not as many people know, that trailhead DX show that that that Salesforce has had for developers. So bring us a little bit inside. What would Salesforce is doing for developers? And, of course, the government angle along those lines, too? >>Yeah, there's a lot going on in the developer world. We were glad to be able to host a virtual version of our trailhead developer conference and announced a lot of exciting new developments, including salesforce anywhere, which is really bringing an immersive voice, video and chat environment to collaborate in the developer environment and into the delivery environment. And you bring that into the public sector. And the benefits are amazing because one of the key challenges with government is keeping up with the pace of the public expectations. In a pace of change in the commercial world, all of the shop and bank and live on our mobile devices. And governments are being faced with the same expectations from the public to do any time anywhere personalized delivery as the code rapid development environments that force offers give public sector I t team the ability to quickly and respond to changing conditions like the code 19 pandemic and roll out applications that are not only fast to develop into boy but they also benefit from being in the govcloud environment. And so the compliance is party built in and that's another key challenges. Often it rises. The public sector is not almost building new applications and making sure they're secure with Salesforce all built in >>Yeah, sounds sounds a lot of sis similarity to what we hear in the private sector, of course, that the balance between what it is doing and how we enable developers, of course security, you mentioned super important anything specifically from the government sector that you'd say, Well, that might be different from what we see in the general enterprise world. >>You know, the but security is top of mind for the public sector, always because they're dealing with the most sensitive data they're dealing with the public trust and trust is really the currency of government. They're not dealing in profit and market share, but they are dealing in a public trust and protecting information like financial data, health data, personal data. And so it's essential that the government had the best in class commercial tools to make sure they are providing world class security for for their their constituents in their mission. And that's one reason we're so excited to be partnering with AWS on Golf Club was because Amazon AWS has already deployed the Fed Ramp I version of their infrastructures of service. And so, by riding on top of that, we inherit all of those existing controls at our own Fed ramp controls. And our customers benefit from the best in class security from two of the most trusted name in public Cloud >>Great. You know, absolutely. Govcloud has been a real boon for the entire industry. When it talks about how government agencies they're leveraging cloud, you talked about sitting on top of ah govcloud the government cloud plus, you know, leverages some of the certifications and like, can you bring us inside a little bit? How long did this effort take? to get anything specific in the integrations were, you know, functionality that that you might be able to highlight about this joint effort. >>Yeah, we've been working on for some time now because it's it's essential to really think from the ground up. And this is not just re platform ing our cloud solutions on AWS. It is rethinking the whole architecture so that we really are organically taking advantage of infrastructure services that AWS provides. So it is a really deep integration. And it's not only a technical tech, integration is the strategic partnership, and you're going to see a lot more now that's coming from both of us about the integration capabilities we're bringing together and a lot of the work we're going to be doing to continue to bring innovation to our joint customers. >>Excellent. You made reference to the pandemic. Uh, what are you hearing from your customers? How does this new offering impact them and support them both? Today is they're reacting to what happens as well as you know, going forward as we progress. >>Yes. Do you know the coveted 19 pandemic really exposed fault line in government programs that weren't scale to meet this demand. We saw website crashing when people were going to them and just overwhelming them with questions about the health situation. We saw benefits programs that only works where people could come in and sign up in a fly in person and obviously with government offices shut down, that wasn't an option. And a lot of government workers were sent home to tell a work without much notice, and their infrastructure just couldn't support it. And so just in general, there are a lot of breakdown along the way. But the good news is that a lot of public sector organizations and programs making that pivot quickly. For example, we worked with one state agency that experienced a 400% spikes in demand for applications for unemployment benefits. It makes sense people are out of work. They need unemployment benefit. But they just couldn't respond to that kind of surging demand. So we worked with them along with AWS and in less than a week stood up a virtual contact center with chatbots so that could meet the demand and provide those vital services to their residents at a time of real needs. So there's a lot to the optimistic about in the middle of this crisis, there is a lot of transformation happening. This kind of forcing function is producing a lot of innovation, transformation. And I think it's really going to make a fundamental shift in how we re imagined government in the future. >>Yeah. Okay, so you're absolutely right that this pandemic has shown a real spotlight on where you know what works and what doesn't, Um, and I think about not only government, but you know, a lot of how finances were often times you have your plans in place, you have your budgets in place. You have, you know, funding cycles. So you know what? What our sales force and Amazon doing to help those you talk about. They have to ramp things up a weight where they financially ready for this. Some companies Oh, wait. I have to temporarily dial things down. That's not in my 12 month or 36 month plan. So are there things that you're doing to help customers, you know, short term in and long term? Are you seeing some? Some change in how people think about their planning and how they could be ready for what change happens out there. >>Yeah, you know, one of the big findings from this whole experience, not just in the public sector but across every industry has been that digital transformation may in the past has been viewed as a nice to have. It is now really the only way to connect and serve both customers and employees, and so digital First, digital transformation is rapidly becoming an urgent imperative because this situation is is not going away overnight. And even when we get back to some state of normal, it's going to be different. It's a digital first and being able to move quickly to roll out services rapidly, to be able to start small and then scale rapidly. These are things that benefit any organization, whether it's government or commercial. >>Excellent. Okay, so I'll let you have the final word. What people want. What you want people to have is their take away of salesforce is participation in the AWS public sector online event. >>We are just so excited to be here with AWS to jointly come to our customers with govcloud plus the fed ramp. I authorized environment for the best in class theory, M and customer and employee services. Our partnership with AWS is one that we're excited about. You're going to see a lot more announcements coming to. It's not only a technology integration, it's also a strategic partnership. And we think our customers jointly. Just going to be really excited about the development. So thank you for the time and glad to be here. >>All right, well, thank you so much. Casey. Congratulations on the government cloud plus launch. And absolutely look forward to hearing more about it. >>Thank you. >>Alright. Be sure to stay tuned. Lots more coverage of the Cube at AWS Public Sector Summit online. I'm Stew Minimum. And thank you for watching the Cube. >>Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah.