AACR Project GENIE Named a Winner of the 2025 Amazon Web Services Imagine Grant for Nonprofits
AI-powered, multilingual cancer research pipeline will accelerate the pace of global data curation and expand access to real-world clinical data
PHILADELPHIA – The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) announced today that AACR Project GENIE® (Genomics Evidence Neoplasia Information Exchange), the world’s largest publicly accessible cancer registry of real-world clinico-genomic data, has been selected as a winner of the 2025 Amazon Web Services (AWS) Imagine Grant. The Imagine Grant is a public grant opportunity open to eligible nonprofit organizations in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada that are using cloud technology to address society’s most pressing challenges.
The grant will support AACR Project GENIE efforts to build an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered, multilingual clinical data translation pipeline that will dramatically expand access to real-world oncology data globally.
AACR Project GENIE was named a winner in the Go Further, Faster category, which recognizes highly innovative projects using advanced cloud services. AACR will receive up to $150,000 in unrestricted funding, up to $100,000 in AWS Credits, and implementation support from AWS technical specialists. Awardees were selected based on innovation, mission impact, and clearly defined outcomes.
The funded initiative will combine advanced AI, natural language processing, and secure AWS cloud infrastructure to provide access to contributions from institutions across Europe and Asia in their native languages. AACR will release portions of the pipeline as open-source Terraform/CDK modules to support adoption by other cancer registries and research groups worldwide.
“Real-world data is one of our most powerful tools for advancing precision oncology, but today, manual abstraction, language barriers, and technical fragmentation slow down progress,” said Shawn M. Sweeney, PhD, senior director of AACR Project GENIE. “This AWS-supported initiative will help us continue to build a global data ecosystem that accelerates insights for cancers that urgently need better evidence.”
“At AWS, we’re continually amazed by the nonprofit sector’s innovative spirit and dedication to creating positive change in our communities and around the globe,” said Rick Buettner, managing director of global nonprofits at AWS. “Through the Imagine Grant program, we’re seeing organizations embrace cloud technology in ways that fundamentally reshape how they deliver on their missions. We’re proud to support AACR Project GENIE as they build a transformative model for global cancer data sharing.”
Since launching in 2018, the AWS Imagine Grant program has awarded more than $21 million in unrestricted funding, AWS Promotional Credits, and technical expertise to over 170 nonprofit organizations. More information is available at the AWS Imagine Grant website.