COVID-19 Research
Given the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic, we will be highlighting the important contributions of NetSI researchers. The institute has leading experts in infectious disease modeling who have been working closely with public health agencies and government leaders to help manage this crisis. This page will be routinely updated, so please check back soon.
Researchers in the Network Science Institute at Northeastern have coalesced to form a COVID-19 research team, bringing together diverse expertise to help mitigate the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our team of scientists are mobilizing our community of interdisciplinary researchers, including the small army of graduate students. With some of the world leaders in infectious disease modeling, Alessandro Vespignani (Director of the Institute) and Sam Scarpino, are leading the modeling efforts, while David Lazer, a computational social scientists is ramping up efforts to track social media activity, and László Barabási is using his network medicine tools to explore re-purposing known viral drugs to fight COVID-19.
Alessandro Vespignani and the MOBS Lab are advising international health agencies, government officials, and other senior leaders by providing simulations of different intervention scenarios to understand best mitigation strategies. They are working closely with both regional government leaders and decision-makers, and are core partners with the CDC/WHO, including 3 COVID-19 Modeling task forces that focus on: 1) Impact of interventions, 2) Spread outside the U.S. and 3) Forecasting in the U.S. Their recommendations are directly contributing to major decisions made by local, states, national and international leaders.
In collaboration with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, University of Florida, Fudan University, Bruno Kessler Foundation, Scientific Interchange Foundation, and the Fogarty Center (NIH).
COVID Spread Prediction Models: Modeling the spreading of COVID-19 to predict effects of control strategies. Spatial epidemic spreading models integrate multiple types of data to generate predictions of exposure and disease spread through populations. Models simulate different intervention strategies, such as travel bans, school closures, social distance policies, to evaluate their effectiveness in limiting the spread of COVID-19.
Disease & Mobility Surveillance: Collect and compile surveillance data to capture human mobility exposure patterns. The team is collecting data on cases and curating and applying mobile phone data to understand true social exposure, the impact of social distancing policies, and compliance to those policies. Population mobility data, COVID cases, hospital capacity and referral patterns, all are essential to determine readiness, and design impactful interventions.
Tracking COVID through Social Media: COVID related social media at a large, global scale, to capture symptoms, behaviors, beliefs, and expectations around COVID. They will evaluate the impact of shelter-in-place policies and economic impacts on exposure risk, testing activity, and behavioral compliance to social distancing efforts.
Drug-repurposing to Cure COVID. The network medicine toolset is being used to map COVID-19 target proteins against known drug targets to explore potential drug-repurposing to cure the disease in humans.
Publications
News & Media
Updates
January 18th, 2021 | Latest report on testing delays and update on public support for COVID-19 measures at COVIDstates.org.
December 1st, 2020 | New Survey Shows How Effects Of COVID-19 Got So Bad In The U.S. David Lazer shares findings with NPR.
November 23rd, 2020 | Dr. David Scrase (New Mexico's Secretary of Health and Human Services), Prof. Sam Scarpino (Northeastern University), Sara Del Valle (Los Alamos National Laboratory), with moderator Julia Goldberg (Santa Fe Reporter) discuss: How has New Mexico responded with evidence and modeling to the current COVID-19 pandemic? on Santa Fe Council on International Relations channel.
November 14th, 2020 | Newest report on COVID states changes in health-related behaviors in Massachusetts.
October 19, 2020 | Samuel Scarpino gives a talk on COVID-19 Dynamics & Evolution. This meeting features cutting-edge research on COVID-19 epidemiology, modeling, and evolution selected from abstracts submitted by the scientific community.
October 8, 2020 | Dr. Sandra Nelson, an infectious disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Samuel Scarpino weighed in on the recent spike of COVID-19 cases in Massachusetts on WGBH News.
September 30, 2020 | Mention of COVID-19 modeling from Northeastern University in a "A three-part plan to eliminate Covid-19" by Bill Gates.
September 24, 2020 | NBC News mention of Alessandro Vespignani on COVID-19 in "Vindicated Covid-19 models warn pandemic is far from over" piece.
September 20, 2020 | Samuel Scarpino spoke at the UrbanNet2020 satellite on how hierarchical population structure and mobility have shaped COVID-19 epidemic.
September 17, 2020 | A new paper has been published in CDC Emerging Infectious Diseases "Early Insights from Statistical and Mathematical Modeling of Key Epidemiologic Parameters of COVID-19". The paper is in collaboration with the CDC and the WHO.
September 15, 2020 | New MOBS Lab research, in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been featured in the Financial Times, CNBC, and National Geographic.
September 14, 2020 | The Dallas Morning News featuring Alessandro Vespignani on travel patters and virus transmission.
August 27, 2020 | Alessandro Vespignani was the closing keynote speaker at the 26th SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. The keynote was titled "Computational Epidemiology at the time of COVID-19"
August 26, 2020 | Samuel Scarpino participates in the "Fighting a pandemic: convergence of expertise, data science and policy" KDD2020 panel.
August 24, 2020 | New preprint on the subject of unintended consequences of inconsistent pandemic control policies from Samuel V. Scarpino and others.
August 12, 2020 | Mathematical Models in Understanding COVID-19 talk by Samuel V. Scarpino here.
August 3, 2020 | Latest update on The State of the Nation: a 50-State COVID-19 Survey report on testing.
July 26, 2020 | Samuel Scarpino's remarks on COVID-19 in the Boston Globe.
July 22, 2020 | Alessandro Vespignani and Matteo Chinazzi join COVID-19 Observatory, an MIT collaboration with the World Bank.
July 17, 2020 | Updated report on mobility, commuting, and contact patterns across the United States during the COVID-19 outbreak by the MOBS lab. View it here.
July 10, 2020 | The State of The Nation: A 50-state COVID-19 survey, a multi-university collaboration project can be found here.
July 9, 2020 | NetSI researchers contributed to the new publication studying the early (cryptic) phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. You can view the publication here.
July 5, 2020 | The New York Times special report on COVID-19. View the 4-page special section here.
June 25, 2020 | NYT article with interactive maps illustrates the hidden spread of the pandemic, featuring research from the team led by Alessandro Vespignani
June 23, 2020 | Steven Johnson, author of The Ghost Map, had Samuel Scarpino on his podcast, Fighting Coronavirus. You can listen to the episode here.
June 10, 2020 | Samuel Scarpino was interviewed by Steven Johnson, author of The Ghost Map, about how "How Data Became One of the Most Powerful Tools to Fight an Epidemic." You can read the essay in the New York Times Magazine.
May 26, 2020 | Samuel Scarpino spoke with Adam Reilly at WGBH about what worked and what didn't work in our response to the first COVID-19 wave.
May 14, 2020 | Northeastern President Joseph E. Aoun discussed the COVID-19 pandemic with Alessandro Vespignani on Facebook Live. The full interview can be viewed here.
May 13, 2020 | A new report has been published by NetSI researchers: Reshaping a nation: Mobility, commuting, and contact patterns during the COVID-19 outbreak, along with an interactive dashboard.
May 4, 2020 | MOBS Lab research has recently been highlighted in The Wall Street Journal, National Geographic and FiveThirtyEight.
April 30, 2020 | David Lazer and collaborators at Harvard and Rutgers have released a 50-state survey of policy preferences and social distancing behaviors. The report can be viewed here and more details are available at this website.
April 29, 2020 | New publication in Science: Changes in contact patterns shape the dynamics of the COVID-19 outbreak in China. View here.
April 29, 2020 | Barabási Lab has developed an interactive tool to track wait times in emergency rooms and urgent care centers across the US: ERTrack.
April 23, 2020 | Alex Vespignani appeared on CNN with Anderson Cooper to discuss the research featured in the New York Times article Hidden Outbreaks Spread Through U.S. Cities Far Earlier Than Americans Knew, Estimates Say.
April 20, 2020 | MOBS Lab has partnered with the CDC to develop COVID-19 forecasts. View details and the model description here.
April 13, 2020 | MOBS Lab and NetSI team are working with Vermont leadership to model COVID-19 mitigation strategies, which appear to be reducing the state's anticipated number of peak cases. More info here and here.
April 8, 2020 | Latest research from the MOBS Lab: Modeling COVID-19 in the United States
April 7, 2020 | MOBS Lab receives support from McGovern Foundation COVID-19 response fund
April 2, 2020 | New publication in The Lancet Infectious Diseases: Evolving epidemiology and transmission dynamics of coronavirus disease 2019 outside Hubei province, China: a descriptive and modelling study. Read here.
March 31, 2020 | New collaboration from NetSI researchers: "Assessing changes in commuting and individual mobility in major metropolitan areas in the United States during the COVID-19 outbreak". Read the report here.
March 25, 2020 | Update from the Barabási Lab: COVID-19: Moving fast!
March 24, 2020 | Update from the Barabási Lab: COVID-19 and Network Medicine
March 23, 2020 | NetSI faculty Sam Scarpino participated in a Boston City Council hearing on the city's COVID-19 response. View the full video here
Research teams
Modeling and Forecasting
MOBS Lab
Alessandro Vespignani (director)
Matteo Chinazzi
Ana Pastore y Piontti
Jessica Davis
Kunpeng Mu
Xinyue Xiong
Graduate Student Team
Computational Social Science
Lazer Lab
David Lazer (director)
Briony Swire Thompson