The global, multifarious challenge posed by the COVID-19 pandemic has scientists tapping their wide-ranging fields of expertise to attack the problem on many fronts. Answering the call from KAUST President Tony Chan, and coordinated by the University's leadership team, KAUST researchers making up the Rapid Research Response Team (R3T) are turning this crisis into an opportunity to innovate.
Damilya Saduakhas, 21 years old, from Kazakhstan, obtained a B.Sc. degree in mathematics from the Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan. Damilya has been selected as a young scientist to participate in the summer Data Lab from Yessenov Foundation and will join KAUST in the fall of 2020 as an M.S./Ph.D. candidate in the KAUST Stochastic Processes and Applied Statistics Research group under the supervision of Professor David Bolin.
Amin Wu is a 24-year-old graduate who will join KAUST from the Communication University of China. Wu will join the University in the fall of 2020 as an M.S./Ph.D. candidate in the KAUST Environmental Statistics Research Group under the supervision of Professor Ying Sun. Wu wants to be a teacher or researcher and use her expertise and knowledge to make the world a better place.
Associate Professor Xin Gao and his group have developed an artificial-intelligence (AI) based solution to help increase COVID-19 testing accuracy. Identifying cases of early stage infection has been particularly challenging for frontline clinicians. Gao's AI-based model, which aims to increase accuracy, has been put to immediate use at King Faisal Specialist Hospital (KFSH) in Riyadh.
Hashtags like #covid19 and #coronavirus help us stay up to date on the developments of the new coronavirus pandemic. But beyond breaking news, tweets also offer a glimpse into the emotional side of the COVID-19 crisis.