Can we simply reboot 2020? Definitely not. But, if so, could we have prepared better for the COVID-19? Most media attention focused on intervention measures to “flatten the curve” such as social distancing, stay-at-home order, mandatory face masks, etc. Another equally important approach to combat an epidemic is through contingency planning and medical resources allocation. Emerging pandemics can place extraordinary and overwhelming demands on public health systems. An effective planning requires the understanding the dynamics of evolving demands and supplies over the course of a pandemic. For example, newly acquired medical supplies should be allocated more to those regions which are in high demand, such as New York State in a country level, or Cook County in the Illinois state level, than those in less demand. Is there a scientific way to systematically allocate medical resources? If so, how can a central authority take a spatiotemporal balance among different regions and along various stages of the pandemics?

Students: Han Bai, Ajay Dugar, Akshay Dugar, Cameron Groch, QingXuan Kong, Xuan Lin, Ben Lipka, Jingying Luo, Sihan Meng, Pasqua Ruggiero, Charan Sankaran, Erchi Wang, Yanbing Yi, Jasmine Yi, Yi Yuan, Yuqi Zhang, Annie Zheng

Supervisor: Xiaowei Chen, Alfred Chong, Runhuan Feng
Graduate Supervisor: Linfeng Zhang

The Terry Group is a Chicago-based actuarial consulting firm focusing on health care and pensions. The firm is made up of 25 individuals, and includes actuaries, researchers and clinicians. The project was designed for the I-Risk Lab to assist the Terry Group in building a forecasting model using the programming language R.  The goal of the client is to build a well-designed model that can be used in a variety of situations.

Students: Hanqing Wang
Supervisor: Brian Septon (The Terry Group)