AFI DSI COVID-19 Research Group

About Us

Go to visualizations and models

We are an interdisciplinary coalition hosted by the American Family Insurance Data Science Institute, with partners from UW-Madison, local and state government, industry, and other academic institutions curating information as fast as we can.

There is an urgent need to develop models that can inform policy makers, as well as the general public, in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has issued a call to action for tech and AI experts to develop new text and data mining techniques to help answer high-priority scientific questions related to COVID-19. We are committed to sharing our own data models and visualizations, as well as those shared by other institutions and news organizations.

Read more about our goals for interpreting, modeling and messaging data in our COVID-19 Data Research Charter.

Going the Distance Together

We’re working to provide results, but raw data and model assumptions are evolving quickly, changing without notice. The COVID-19 pandemic is a complex medical and sociological event: data have biases that make interpretation tricky, and models are limited by assumptions and data. That said, we know physical distancing (also labeled social distancing) makes a difference. COVID-19 cases are continuing to climb. If we all do our part and stay apart, we can go the distance together.  Be positive, stay negative.

Learn more about how UW-Madison is supporting public health and the people of Wisconsin during this pandemic at the UW-Madison COVID-19 Impact site.

Funding opportunities

MIDAS Network: Funding announcements for COVID-19 modeling research

School of Medicine and Public Health:

• Funding opportunities related to COVID-19 (includes information on dealing with grant interruptions and delays due to COVID)
• Wisconsin Partnership Program announces $2.2 million in grants in response to COVID-19

Research and Sponsored Programs: COVID-19 updates related to sponsored programs

InfoEd Global: COVID-19 research-related funding opportunties

Community

Understanding a global pandemic requires creating community around studying it and making any discovery understandable for the public. It’s an aim of our group, and other collaborative efforts around understanding the effects of COVID-19 are popping up around the world.

Media stories highlighting the contributions of our team members:

• Q&A: Malia Jones discusses returning to school as pandemic continues. Capital Times, 26 July 2020.
• A Coalition of Scientists Takes on COVID-19 — with Data. Grow Magazine, Summer 2020.
• Q&A: Ajay Sethi dispels COVID-19 conspiracies. Capital Times, 10 May 2020.
• Five people. One test. This is how you get there. New York Times, 7 May 2020.
• Dr. Malia Jones’s public outreach on COVID-19 is documented in the Applied Population Laboratory’s publications archive.
• Why climate change can lead to more pandemics. Wisconsin Public Radio, 22 April 2020.
• Researchers at UW-Madison lead data science coalition to aid with COVID-19. University Communications, 21 April 2020.
• UW-Madison engineer works with local health leaders to develop COVID-19 prediction models. University Communications, 17 April 2020.
• UW-Madison researchers tracking travel, social media to help contain virus. University Communications, 13 April 2020.
• Reason for hope against the novel coronavirus. Wisconsin State Journal, 3 April 2020.

Webinars and presentations:

• Population Health Sciences Monday Web Chat: Data Science in the Pandemics Age (60 minutes). 27 July 2020.
• Crossroads of Ideas: COVID-19 edition, part 2 (59 minutes). 20 April 2020.
• Nelson Institute Virtual 2020 Earth Day Conference: Transmission and transitions: How climate change is impacting human and planetary health (60 minutes). 20 April 2020.
• Crossroads of Ideas: COVID-19 edition, part 1 (59 min). 14 April 2020.
• UW-Madison MPH Program Webinar: COVID-19: Being an effective opinion leader (56 min). 31 March 2020.
• The UW Now Livestream includes faculty presentations on COVID-19 research in its weekly lineup of programs.

Other resources:

• COVID-19 Wisconsin Connect. UW-Madison Center for Health Assessment Systems Studies (CHESS)
• Art and the coronavirus. UW-Madison Global Health Institute
• Wisconsin Do Your Part: YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Coloring Book.
• The American Statistical Association (ASA) has created the COVID-19 Data, Statistics, and Research and Discussion group.
• MIDAS is looking to grow its community of data scientists interested in COVID-19 modeling research.

Data science can contribute to helping the world navigate and understand how to mitigate this pandemic. We’re featuring some stories that highlight data science’s role in prevention, mitigation, and relief efforts.

• Starting around 15 years ago, Neil Ferguson developed pandemic models for influenza, and recently developed an agent-based continuous time model for COVID-19 that influenced action in the U.S. and the U.K.
• Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now, features data from the spread of this pandemic, and covers the handling of public health crises since the Spanish Influenza of 1918.
• Some Cities Could Have Coronavirus Outbreaks Worse than Wuhan’s
• Democracy Now! interviewed Avi Schiffman, the creator of the nCoV2019.live
• Caltech scientists examine COVID-19 by the numbers
• Social distancing “flattened the curve” in 1918, too
• Covid-19 in India: A data-centric summary
• FiveThirtyEight: A comic strip tour of the wild world of pandemic modeling