Cameron Nowzari, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, received $150,000 from the National Science Foundation for a project in which he and his collaborators are developing numerical methods and mathematical models to provide complementary support to the epidemiologists worldwide who are working to understand how COVID-19 spreads.
Some of the questions they hope to answer are: Is social distancing working? How much more effective would it be to require people to shelter-in-place? Is it worth the social cost? What is the effect of 10 percent of the population ignoring these protocols? What is the marginal benefit of enforcing quarantines versus implementation cost?
As they work, however, the researchers expect that their questions will evolve.
Funding for this project began in May 2020 and will end in April 2021.