Flywheel lands grant from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support global research

Flywheel, a Minneapolis-based software startup that manages data for medical researchers, announced Wednesday it was awarded a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The multi-year grant, worth $829,000, will give an international cohort of researchers a centralized, cloud-based research infrastructure as they study the neurodevelopmental health of children growing up in poverty and other adverse environments in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

"We're really proud to be part of it. I think it's great that they see the value in what we're doing," said Can Akgun, senior vice president of business development at Flywheel.

The research is being led by King's College of London and involves acquiring brain scans through MRI machines at 25 sites in Africa and Asia.

The MRI data gathered up to this point will be migrated to Flywheel's platform, where it will increase productivity and eliminate IT burdens that hamper projects of this size.

Can Akgun, senior vice president of business development at Flywheel, said the company's platform will work "out-of-the-box" for the researchers, and not require very much personalized development.

"It's actually one of those few cases where we don't have to do much customization," Akgun said.

Akgun said this is the first time Flywheel has teamed up with a foundation, but he expects more consortiums to turn to its platform.

Rather than aggregate data through uploading files on Dropbox or mailing hard drives, Flywheel allows for data to be centralized and accessible to teams in multiple locations, Akgun said.

Last fall, Flywheel, which has offices in the Bay Area, St. Louis and Budapest, closed on a $22 million Series C round of venture capital funding.