The Small World Initiative® (SWI) is an innovative program that encourages students to pursue careers in science and increases scientific literacy while addressing a pressing worldwide health threat – superbugs and the diminishing supply of effective antibiotics. SWI has trained educators in 45 US states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 15 countries to implement its innovative curriculum to engage students in the quest to discover new drugs to treat antibiotic-resistant infections, commonly referred to as "superbugs." The program's unique approach provides not only an inexpensive "crowdsourcing" model for early-stage drug discovery but also a blueprint on how to retain students, especially women and minorities, in the sciences. SWI has offices in Texas, New York, and Connecticut and was originally initiated by a team of researchers at Yale University.
Mission:
The Small World Initiative® (SWI) strives to combine technology, science, and innovation to make meaningful and measurable improvements in the global education and healthcare landscape.
The mission of the program is twofold.
First, it seeks to encourage students to pursue careers in science and increase scientific literacy through real-world applicable laboratory and field research in introductory courses.
Second, it aims to address a worldwide health threat – the diminishing supply of effective antibiotics – by tapping into the collective power of many student researchers concurrently tackling the same challenge, living up to its motto “crowdsourcing antibiotic discovery.”®