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Track: Life Sciences

Predicting and Preventing COVID-19 Outbreaks in Indoor Environments: An Agent-Based Modeling Study

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is so far one of the deadliest pandemic of the 21st century responsible for 2 million fatalities globally in its first year alone. COVID-19 has also caused major disruptions in business operations as people practice social distancing and stay at home to mitigate its spread. As plans for “return-to-normal” are formulated, questions related to the most effective mitigation policies in indoor environments are of the utmost importance. In this talk, we will introduce a new open-source Agent-Based modeling framework to evaluate facility usage policies and their risk of leading to outbreaks. We will discuss results obtained on a model office building which show that not all facility occupants present the same risk of starting an outbreak. Therefore, good mitigation strategies should include ways to identify highly connected individuals (in terms of number of daily close contacts as determined by their job function and daily schedule) and lower their risk profile as much as possible. We will also show the influence of facility layouts in determining the likelihood of indoor transmission.

Mardochee Reveil image

Mardochee Reveil

Mardochee Reveil

Senior Research Scientist at Corning Incorporated

Mardochee Reveil holds a Master’s degree from Syracuse University and a PhD from Cornell University, both in Chemical Engineering. His doctoral research focused on using machine learning for diffusion studies in semiconductors. In his current position as a Sr. Research Scientist at Corning Incorporated, Dr. Reveil contributes to both inorganic and organic material research projects using advanced materials modeling and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. He has created various internal AI tools and machine learning models for applications such as display technologies and camera modules in smartphones, self-driving cars and smart manufacturing. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Reveil led the creation of CITAM, an agent-based modeling platform to support decision making to help mitigate infection risks in indoor environment.