COVID Research and Resources Group brings physicists together – Physics World

Physics has an important role to play in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. Many physicists are already contributing to COVID-related research, in areas including computational modelling, medical imaging and development of protective and therapeutic equipment. Many such physicists are working in isolation, however, and only interacting on a local level. The newly formed COVID Research and Resources Group (CRRG) aims to bring these physicists and related researchers together, allowing them to benefit from a more coordinated approach.

Leading the initiative is Robert Jeraj, professor of medical physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He tells Physics World how the CRRG originated: “The American Physical Society [APS] has a Topical Group on Medical Physics, GMED, and we had a discussion about how we can help to bring together physicists that are interested in COVID-related research, those already doing research and those who want to contribute and share resources. Partnering with many other APS units, this turned into the COVID Research and Resources Group.”

The CRRG aspires to be a global initiative, connecting physicists, engineers, and other medical and biological experts from groups and societies worldwide. To achieve this, it created an online community on the APS Engage platform where members can share ideas and conduct discussions. Jeraj notes that this group, which now has 100 members, is not limited to physicists or APS members but is open to anyone to join.

Established back in the summer, the first job for the CRRG organizing committee was to understand the needs of the community and set up resources and initiatives to meet these needs. The first idea to emerge from their brainstorming was a series of APS COVID webinars, which will launch later this week, on 23 September.

The webinars are aimed at a broad audience, from college students upwards, and will be presented by experts, at a level that’s understandable to non-experts. The first speaker will be epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch, director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard University. Lipsitch will describe key features of the epidemiology of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the complexity of the data-generating mechanisms.

“For the first talk, we wanted to have somebody to set the stage, to present the problem in a form that physicists can respond to,” explains Jeraj.  “We’ve seen a lot of physicists wanting to help, but either not having access to the data or not understanding the challenges of the publicly available dataset. Marc Lipsitch has had a career in modelling data, he understands the heterogeneity of data, the difficulties of obtaining data and the impact of data imperfections on the model outcome. He can explain the current challenges; physics can then bring the solutions.”

The APS COVID webinars will continue on a fortnightly basis, with the next three speakers already lined up (see box below). Members are encouraged to use the CRRG community website to suggest questions ahead of time and then discuss the webinar coverage afterwards. In addition, some of the presenters will also create webinars aimed at high-school students and provide resources for physics teachers. The CRRG also plans to conduct a survey to determine future topics and gather suggestions for additional speakers.

Another project involves a “post-review” of recently published COVID-19 literature to highlight high-impact papers. In partnership with Johns Hopkins University, the CRRG aims to create a library of the most important research.

“COVID-19 research is an area where I think medical physics needs to be heavily engaged,” says Jeraj. “I feel responsibility to dedicate my time to this.”