Can Rapid Response Data Science Teams Help Prevent Future Pandemics?
Eric Kolaczyk, The Director of Hariri Institute of Computing, shares his opinion with BU Today, in an article titled “POV: COVID-19 Shows Us We Need Rapid Response Data Science Teams.” In it, he describes how the COVID-19 pandemic is not only an indication of the need for development but also a rapid response from data scientists.
In the article, Kolaczyk mentions that we are learning about ourselves as a society and that data science plays a critical role in times such as these. In not so many words, he says, “We’re not prepared, despite all of the advancements in data science that has been made.” Specifically, we’re not prepared to collect the data, analyze, and provide insights. He went on to cite John Snow and the London cholera epidemic and how Snow demonstrated how data science could control infectious disease. Later on, he acknowledges that none of this dismisses the collective efforts across the country and world, but what is missing is the coordination, infrastructure, and planning of the efforts. The data science community has responded heroically during unprecedented times like these. Also, let’s not forget that data science is still young, so insufficient preparedness is expected. There’s a sense of urgency in pushing the community to do something different and that perhaps the challenge comes from the scale of the event. He concludes that there is no better time than now to be prepared for the next global-scale event.
About Eric Kolaczyk
Eric Kolaczyk is a Professor of Math & Statistics at BU. Currently, he serves as Director of the Hariri Institute for Computing. He was named a Data Science Faculty Fellow at Boston University in 2018. His current research interests revolve mainly around the statistical analysis of network-indexed data, with particular focus on both foundational issues and statistical problems arising in practice.