Digital Science, a technology company serving emergent needs across the research sector, is pleased to announce a partnership with Beijing-based technology company Zhipu.AI to conduct data challenges and collaborate in building a COVID-19 information portal.

Zhipu.AI, a spin-out from Tsinghua University, aims to build an advanced artificial intelligence engine that can support and empower the research and innovation sectors globally. The company focuses on solving the current challenges of research organizations and government agencies, by using its experience in analyzing large-scale complex networks, deep semantic mining and leveraging innovative techniques with cognitive graphs.

This strategic collaboration will see the two companies work together on a broad range of projects over the next several years. Some of the existing opportunities planned for the collaboration include joint hosting of a new set of data challenges centered around scholarly communications problems such as name disambiguation; and bringing together advanced analysis tools from both companies to create deeper insights for the sector. Collaboration will be a central theme of the new relationship and will see Digital Science’s Overleaf made more seamlessly available to more Chinese users, enabling them to create, edit and publish their research all from one browser using the real-time collaborative LaTeX editor.

Professor Jie Tang, Chief Scientist at Zhipu, said: “Digital Science and Zhipu.AI are united by a common goal, that is, to leverage technology to improve information flows and encourage collaboration to facilitate research and innovation.

“With our combined strengths in advanced digital technologies and insights into the scientific ecosystem from both a global and regional perspective, we are able to build more intelligent and reliable tools to encourage the exchange of ideas and improve research practices to better serve the needs of the research community. We look forward to a fruitful partnership and are excited about our first joint initiatives on data challenges and the COVID-19 information portal.”

This partnership comes at a critical time with the global threat posed by COVID-19. Both teams will work together to ensure that both English and Chinese-language information is as widely shared as possible by providing a COVID-19 information portal with all related publications, datasets and clinical trials exported into a google sheet and hosted on Digital Science’s Figshare, as well as a dedicated website. The google sheet and website will be updated daily pulling all relevant content on COVID-19 from Digital Science’s Dimensions platform, to make sharing and distributing this research information easier.

Daniel Hook, CEO Digital Science, said: “It is a pleasure to be working with colleagues from Zhipu.AI. Just as in academia itself, international collaborations between companies that support the emerging global research infrastructure are critical to establishing the tools and cultures that allow us to act globally to tackle the world’s hardest problems. We are proud to launch this initiative with our partners in China and look forward to sharing the fruits of this collaboration with colleagues, partners and clients around the world.

“For more information, visit digital-science.com and follow @digitalsci on Twitter.