SFI External Professor Lauren Ancel Meyers will lead a new interdisciplinary Center for Pandemic Decision Science at the University of Texas at Austin, funded by a pilot grant from the National Science Foundation.
The center will extend the work of the UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium — a team of researchers and clinicians that heroically pulled together in 2020 to study and model the COVID-19 pandemic, providing forecasting tools for decision-makers across the U.S.
More than 40 multidisciplinary investigators from 11 different institutions are collaborating to launch the new Center, according to a UT press release. Among them is SFI Professor Michael Lachmann, who has been with the consortium since its inception and played a key role in programming a COVID-19 dashboard that provides weekly forecasts for pandemic-related hospitalizations at the county level.
“This represents an ambitious next step for the UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium,” Meyers told UT in a press release. “Over the last three years, the consortium has been a leading force in pandemic forecasting to help individuals, schools, communities and global leaders navigate the changing risks of the virus.”
Read the full press release at UT News