In late 2019, nobody was studying COVID-19; we were not even aware it existed.  Fast forward to a year later, and the first vaccines are now being delivered.

This monumental feat required thousands of scientists to step into a new research field and focus all of their effort to tackle the new coronavirus. 

Crowdfight was born to help this transformation. Switching to a new topic of study is extremely complex, and cannot be done alone. Progress is too often hindered by missing one piece of advice about a protocol, or one key reagent. In today's interconnected world, it's possible to get that advice in a matter of hours and to have the reagent shipped overnight. The challenge is to find the right person at the right time. Collaboration is key.

Crowdfight has established a platform in which scientists with critical skills can assist those who are better prepared to fight the pandemic. Our COVID-19 effort was very successful, with more than 45 000 scientists joining the platform and more than 100 successful collaborations established. Thanks to our community of scientists it takes very little to do a lot, but this little is critical. We need a small core of highly skilled professionals who can understand and communicate what each scientist needs. Right now, it takes us ~5 hours or work to establish a successful collaboration. These 5 hours can save weeks of trial-and-error to a researcher, an are affordable to fight COVID-19. 

We now want to extend our method to the fight against other diseases. 

We know we can be successful in this new endeavour --we have already done it for COVID-19.

We also want to create a more agile platform and develop a faster and better way of working, so that researchers can have their needs and requests resolved in even a shorter amount of time - we want to speed up research.

We can do it: Our current system was setup in a rush, and has huge room for improvement. We are running a state-of-the-art crowdsourcing infrastructure on spreadsheets like this one showing the progress of our requests. 

But what we need  is your help. Your contribution will allow us to expand into other disease areas beyond COVID-10.With your help, we can also will build custom tools to take our activity to the next level.

Thank you very much!