To combat the COVID-19 pandemic, Northeastern College of Engineering researchers are conducting interdisciplinary research in four strategic areas:
Vaccines and Diagnostics
Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Optimization
Human-Machine Interaction
Harnessing Data
From developing healthcare optimization planning tools and rapid testing capabilities, to improving the safety of homemade masks, our faculty are working with hospitals, industry, government authorities, and other academic institutions to find solutions to mitigate virus risks.
During the pandemic, MIE Professor Ozlem Ergun and her students created a centralized process to match healthcare workers with open positions at long-term health facilities.
MIE Associate Professor Babak Heydari’s research on “Micro-level Social Structures and the Success of COVID-19 National Policies” was published in the Nature Computational Science journal. The study shows that the micro-level structure of person-to-person interactions—measured by average household size and in-person social contact rate—can be an important explanatory factor in the success of COVID-19 policy.