As Founding Director of the Data Science Institute, I led a research team spanning the campus and beyond to the state, with a few more far-flung collaborators. This involved leading daily (soon weekly, later monthly) meetings with a variety of teams from March 2020 through 2022. We had near-weekly talks by a variety of people. My leadership helped connect people from disparate backgrounds to collaborate effectively.

One highly productive group collaborated with the CDC to study and, working with campus leaders, flatten a Covid19 outbreak in Fall 2020 (Currie et al. 2021). Our team published an additional paper on forecasting cases (Aravamuth et al. 2023) based on work we did with UW-Madison to project need for isolation hotel rooms prior to Thanksgiving 2020.

Another collaboration with the WI State Lab of Hygiene wastewater team and the stated Divison of Public Health led to improvements in measuring wastewater and accuracy and presentation of the state wastewater surveilence dashboard. Members of our team developed a portable Covid19 Wastewater Analysis Package. Our collaborations helped WSLH get awarded a CDC Center of Excellence for wastewater surveillance.

• DSI Covid19 Research Group
  • Charter
  • Covid Fairness

Over time, I may add more information on our activities here.

Presentations

• DSI Covid-19 Research Group, 12 Apr 2020
• COVID-19 Campus Models, 29 Jul 2020
• DSI Covid-19 Research Group, 9 Feb 2021
• DSI Wastewater Team, 6 Sep 2022

Web Pages

Our group developed a number of web pages to communicate with the public and with decision makers at UW-Madison and health leaders across the state and beyond. Sri talked about our work at UW’s Posit Day 2024. Many of those pages are now defunct.

• Data Science in the Time of Coronavirus, Srikanth Aravamuthan, 17 Jan 2024 [see UW Posit Day]] vidwo starts at 2:23:40]
• Paltiel et al. 2020 Covid19 Dashboard
• COVID-19 Wastewater Analysis & Analysis Package
• COVID-19: Wisconsin Wastewater Monitoring Program

Publications

• Currie DW, Moreno GK, Delahoy MJ, Pray IW, Jovaag A, Braun KM, Cole D, Shechter T, Fajardo GC, Griggs C, Yandell BS, Goldstein S, Bushman D, Segaloff H, Kelly GP, Pitts C, Lee C, Grande KM, Kita-Yarbro A, Grogan B, Mader S, Baggott J, Bateman AC, Westergaard RP, Tate JE, Friedrich TC, Kirking HL, O’Connor DH, Killerby ME (2021) Description of a University COVID-19 Outbreak and Interventions to Disrupt Transmission, Wisconsin, August - October, 2020. Emerging Infectious Diseases 27 : 2776–2785. https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2711.211306
• Aravamuthan S, Reyes JFM, Yandell BS, Döpfer D (2023) Real-Time Estimation and Forecasting of COVID-19 Cases and Hospitalizations in Wisconsin HERC Regions for Public Health Decision Making Processes. BMC Public Health 23 : 359. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-15160-6