Dr.Du received a NSF RAPID grant titled “High-Frequency Data Collection for Human Mobility Prediction during COVID-19″. Many states and cities are considering a reopen in the next month or so – this research will predict the consequences by predicting human mobility (i.e., how people move).  It will use social media big data analysis (millions of people), and a smart phone app-based daily surveys to a representative group of people to predict why/how people plan their daily trips to different activities. The developed model will advance current disease spread models (such as SIR) and benefit future disease control efforts (maybe for the next public health crisis). The collaborator is Dr. Ryan Qi Wang, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at Northeastern University.

https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2027708&HistoricalAwards=false