A group of BU computer scientists and engineers is developing a way to track the spread of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 on an individual level that keeps identities private. Professor Ran Canetti and Research Associate Professor Mayank Varia, both from the Department of Computer Science, along with their colleague Ari Trachtenberg in the College of Engineering, are working with researchers from other universities to develop an app that lets you know if you’ve been in contact with the virus without needing your personal information. Their work is based on a short paper they wrote, titled Anonymous Collocation Discovery: Harnessing Privacy to Tame the Coronavirus, published earlier in the month on arXiv.
The cybersecurity scholars are currently lending their ideas and expertise to the PACT (Private Automated Contact Tracing) project, which is working out of MIT. Read more about their collaboration, their study, and the fast track on this important work at The Brink.
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