Due to the COVID19 pandemic, both PI-Kakade and PI-Blumenstock rapidly pivoted efforts to focus on several COVID-related efforts. The first was focused on public health management, and consisted of work to improve contact tracing (both manual and digital) and the methods for estimating COVID prevalence and resource requirements. The second used societal scale digital data from developing countries to help direct emergency humanitarian aid. Each of these efforts were huge interdisciplinary collaborations between theoretical computer scientists, mobile networking experts, social scientists, epidemiologists, and medical doctors.
Our work on the COVID19 pandemic had immediate consequences and influenced policy makers guidance for when lockdowns should occur, and it also provided guidelines for the number of tests and contact tracers required for controlling outbreaks. We brought together theoretical computer scientists (and cryptographers), sensor networking experts, social scientists, epidemiologists, and medical doctors to develop new contact tracing methodologies. This laid the foundations for the new Exposure Notification App now deployed in WA state.
This work was done with support from the National Science Foundation, under NSF Awards CCF-1637360, CCF-1703574, CCF-1740551, and IIS-1942702