Brown Research Teams Mobilize to Investigate COVID-19 Solutions

In May 2020, Brown's new COVID-19 Research Seed Fund, consisting of 15 teams of faculty researchers, began working to develop solutions that could impact the world's response to the pandemic. Emily Oster will work with the team determining how widespread the exposure to the virus has been in Rhode Island.

With the goal of fast-tracking innovative research on COVID-19, Brown University has awarded a total of $350,000 to 15 teams of faculty researchers working rapidly to develop solutions that could impact the world’s response to the pandemic. The teams will focus on four major areas: long-term care, statewide biorepository, antiviral drugs for treatment, and estimating exposure. Emily Oster will work collaboratively on the latter, helping to determine how widespread the exposure to the virus has been in Rhode Island. Because of the large number of people who remain asymptomatic after being infected, the accurate analysis is currently unknown. Oster holds an important role on the team because of her expertise with data analysis and perspective as co-chair of Brown’s Healthy Fall 2020 task force, which is developing a public health plan with the goal reopening the campus safely in the fall.