Ayaz Hyder, TDAI affiliate and assistant professor of environmental health sciences, has been using his expertise in computational epidemiology to help develop a shared data resource that can be used by agencies and organizations who are responding to COVID-19 and leading recovery efforts. The resource he and his team have created is called COVIDCommons, and aims to compile different types of COVID-19 models and datasets into one place. 

“COVIDCommons will bring these different models together in a way that allows different types of researchers across Ohio State and beyond to be able to share their data and contribute to a set of tools that can provide information to decision makers,” Hyder said. 

The modeling data will be publicly available and can be used to run ‘What if?’ scenarios for opening and closing workplaces and schools, as well as predict the impact of varying levels of compliance with public health orders regarding social distancing. 

Hyder was able to take some of his prior modeling work from a substance abuse prevention project that is supported by a MDBH Spoke grant from the National Science Foundation (led by TDAI’s Raghu Machiraju). Because of the already available data and modeling, COVIDCommons was able to launch in time to provide immediate assistance to health offices around the state.

His team is based at TDAI and is working with the Ohio Departments of Education, Health, Jobs and Family Services, and Transportation; the governor’s office; Columbus Public Health; Franklin County Public Health; the Mid-Ohio Foodbank and others. 

Other members of the COVIDCommons team include Goonmeet Bajaj, Jany Chan, Enhao Liu, Raghu Machiraju, Srini Parthasarathy and Michael Rayo of the College of Engineering; Harvey Miller of the Department of Geography; ChienWei (Jack) Chiang of the College of Medicine; Samuel Malloy of the John Glenn College of Public Affairs; and Steve Chang of TDAI. Additional assistance in modeling and computational support involved Guido España of the Mathematical Biosciences Institute; Tim Huerta and Joseph Papio of the College of Medicine; Eric Franz and Wilbur Ouma of the Ohio Supercomputer Center; and Jared Huling of the Department of Statistics.