News & Updates

The University of Kentucky College of Medicine and UK HealthCare have launched a new clinical trial designed to assess the prevalence of COVID-19 in central and eastern Kentucky. Known as Serologic Testing to Accelerate Recovery and Transition (START), the study focuses on antibody testing to begin understanding how many people in the region may have already contracted and recovered from COVID-19. The trial is a partnership between the UK College of Medicine, UK HealthCare Infection Prevention and Control (IPAC), the UK Markey Cancer Center, and University Health Service, and is co-led by IPAC Medical Director Dr. Derek Forster and Precision Medicine Clinic Director Jill Kolesar, Pharm.D.

The UH-Hilo Computer Science Department is working to print prototype reusable face shields to be used during the COVID-19 pandemic. The 3-D printed frames are compatible with transparent sheet protectors that are used as the actual shields. An elastic band is used to secure the frame and shield to one’s head.

A team of undergraduate students from the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo Department of Computer Science and UH Mānoa College of Engineering was awarded Best Visualization Showcase Award for the upcoming Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing 2020 Conference (PEARC20). The team’s project integrated three-dimensional models of Hawaiian coral reefs into an immersive virtual reality platform.

As mountain watersheds store and release water, the Earth’s shape changes ever so subtly. The University of Montana Department of Geosciences now can track those changes by GPS, thanks to a $1.4 million cut of a multi-institutional collaborative award from the National Science Foundation. The total value of the award, part of the NSF’s Frontier Research in Earth Sciences program, is $2.43 million.

Dr. Irene Andreu manages the Rhode Island Consortium for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, a core facility supported by RI NSF EPSCoR that houses high-tech microscopes capable of examining the composition of materials at the smallest of scales. Prior to the pandemic, for example, Andreu was helping students research how aquatic bacteria adheres to microplastics. Now, she’s using the microscopes to better understand the effectiveness of certain filter materials for masks that hinder spread of the COVID-19 virus.

With funding and support from Kentucky's National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), a team from UK and Somerset Community College (SCC) is creating 3D-printed, membrane-filtered face masks that can inactivate the coronavirus. The goal, through passive decontamination, is to not only protect people from breathing in viruses, but to eliminate them on contact.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $10 million to the Pervasive Technology Institute at Indiana University (IU) in collaboration with University of Hawaiʻi, University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), Arizona State University (ASU) and Cornell University to deploy Jetstream 2, a nationwide distributed cloud computing system that supports on-demand research, artificial intelligence (AI) and enhanced large-scale data analysis.

Today, computing experts measure supercomputer performance using benchmarks that measure just a tiny kernel of the supercomputer’s computation power. For leaders at organizations that invest in supercomputers, scientists who use supercomputers, and experts who build new computers, a more comprehensive suite of benchmarks could be a useful tool when making complex, expensive decisions.

In the effort to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus and treat infected patients, special equipment that performs cutting-edge research at Montana State University has been repurposed to help Gallatin County health care providers. Before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, formally named SARS-CoV-2, a machine in MSU researcher Michelle Flenniken's lab called a qPCR analyzer was used to detect viruses that attack bees and other pollinators around the state. Now it has been temporarily moved to Bozeman Health Deaconess Hospital, where the tool can perform up to 60 much-needed COVID-19 tests per day.

Scientists at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center are part of a national viral genomics consortium to better map SARS-CoV-2 transmission via whole genome sequencing of the virus that causes COVID-19. The SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing for Public Health Emergency Response, Epidemiology and Surveillance (SPHERES) consortium led by the CDC kicked off in May 2020. Dr. Daryl Domman, PhD an Assistant Professor in the Center for Global Heath in the Department of Internal Medicine and Dr. Darrell L. Dinwiddie, PhD an Assistant Professor in the Division of Genetics in the Department of Pediatrics are leading the efforts for the states of New Mexico and Wyoming. They have established partnerships with the New Mexico Department of Health and the Wyoming Public Health Lab to sequence positive cases from those states are also working to join with other public health labs in the Mountain West region.