We are very keen to engage young researchers and innovators from I-DAIR hubs and partners in an institutionalised manner. This will be an essential step in building a global transdisciplinary community on digital health and AI in health; equally, it will create a strong liaison between the institutions you represent and the I-DAIR Secretariat. One idea that the I-DAIR team has been thinking of is an I-DAIR Research Fellowship for young post-docs who could be based in the hubs and research institutes we have MoUs with, and who can be funded by the I-DAIR Secretariat. We believe that this would be crucial for engaging young researchers in particular from the Global South, who could work together in a distributed manner just as we want the research infrastructure and data to work in a distributed manner across the I-DAIR network. At this point, we want to test this out with an initial cohort of 7 post-docs who can be associated with the PathFinders projects led by Mehdi (interoperability, benchmarking and the Global Research Map), Peiling ( Open Health and the Global Pandemic Scheme), Alice (capacity development), and myself (governance). We hope to have the first Fellows in place by early April. We can offer remuneration as per your current institutional norms to make it easier administratively and to fit our budget this year.

I would be grateful if you could share this with a few outstanding candidates who can hit the ground running, and encourage them to send in their CVs and a letter of motivation to irene.rey@graduateinstitute.ch Details are in the annexed call.

My office will be reaching out separately for 20-30 minute bilateral calls to update you on some key developments, and get your advice on how to further strengthen our partnership. In particular, I would like your advice on a short (3-4 days) Science Conference, if possible in September. It could be first hosted by the Geneva Secretariat but could rotate among the hubs in subsequent years. This would be an opportunity for hubs and select members of the first Science Consortium to look at early outcomes from the PathFinders and debate future directions.

Meanwhile, stay safe and healthy.

Warm regards

click here for the 2021 I-DAIR annual report