COVID Modeling Accelerator

Public health officials need better data-driven tools to make critical decisions in the midst of the pandemic

Covid-19 Modeling Accelerator splash image

The COVID Modeling Accelerator was created to support a cohort of academic research teams to meet the needs of state and local decision-makers for actionable insights to better respond to the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fenris partnered with the Society of Medical Decision Making (SMDM) and Rockefeller Foundation to support these academic research teams through user research, product strategy, and UI design.

Overview

The CMA team interviewed dozens of modeling teams and invited a set of candidates to apply. Fenris team members worked with candidates to help develop objectives and milestones, and to create a proposal in less than a month. Proposals were reviewed by SMDM, and the funds were administered via a vendor contract from Johns Hopkins University. Guidance was provided by the steering committee, which included members from RF, SMDM, and Fenris. The committee also helped determine allocation of technical assistance to the awardees.

The data modeling teams are multi-disciplinary teams composed of epidemiologists, numerical modelers, and experts in public health, operations research, and related fields. More information is available about the awardees of the COVID Modeling Accelerator on the SMDM website at https://nursing.jhu.edu/cma. We thank these teams for the opportunity to work with them and learn from them.

You can read Rockefeller Foundation’s announcement of this initiative for more information.

Partners

Rockefeller Foundation (RF)

Funder, Strategy, Steering Committee

The Rockefeller Foundation advances new frontiers of science, data, and innovation to solve global challenges related to health, food, power, and economic mobility. The CMA is a part of RF's COVID-19 response.

RF Covid-19 Response

Society of Medical Decision Making (SMDM)

Administrator, Subject Matter Expertise, Steering Committeeh

SMDM is dedicated to promoting rational and systematic approaches to decision making that will improve the health and clinical care of individuals and assist health policy formation.

SMDM Website

Fenris

Coordination for technical and strategic assistance

Fenris was founded by Aman Ahuja to support teams developing responsible data systems for public benefit through collaborative co-design of product strategy, equitable data governance, and targeted technical assistance.

Website

The Fenris Team

Aman Ahuja

Steering Committee, Product Strategy, Project Lead

Aman is a team builder and advisor with 15 years of experience helping organizations implement data tools and develop product strategies.

Website

Kamini Iyer

Kamini often finds herself at the intersection of data, design, and impact. With a background spanning across marketing, graphic design, data analytics, and program management, she guides teams to translate data insights into meaningful experiences and visuals. She is especially focused on lending her expertise to teams that are focused on social impact work.

Website

Daniel Olmstead

Daniel is a data scientist and designer with two decades of experience telling stories through design, discourse, and data. Although his background is in front-end user interfaces, his more recent projects relied heavily on engineering complex cloud pipelines to build dynamic visualizations out of high-volume, streaming data.

Website

Louis Potok

Louis is a consultant and entrepreneur with experience across a variety of domains. He has been a behavioral economist focused on financial inclusion, a product manager and data science leader at early-stage software startups, and is currently building Recoolit, a climate-tech startup preventing gigatons of emissions from refrigerant gases.