May 20, 2021
Peak Scholar helps chart route out of COVID-19
There鈥檚 always a moment 鈥 a lightbulb or, sometimes, a slow train of an idea that finally comes fully into view. For Rahul Arora 鈥 Peak Scholar and adjunct lecturer in the Department of Community Health Sciences and the Centre for Health Informatics in the Cumming School of Medicine (CSM) 鈥 that moment came when he was asked by Canada鈥檚 COVID-19 Immunity Task Force to help 鈥渒eep an eye鈥 on global immunity data.
鈥淥f course I said, 鈥榊es鈥 but,鈥 says Arora, 鈥渨e thought to ourselves, 鈥榃ell, how are we going to manage that?鈥欌
Enter the SeroTracker, an innovation that Arora developed, along with Tingting Yan, BHSc鈥19, as a way to contribute meaningfully to the pandemic response. Last April, the former classmates quickly organized epidemiologists and engineers in their networks, many of whom were 草莓污视频导航 alumni, to build an online tool that could help with Canada鈥檚 Covid-19 strategy.
Arora, BHSc鈥19 (Honours), was the ninth student from CSM to receive a Rhodes Scholarship, and the first from the Bachelor of Health Sciences program. In the fall of 2019, he started a PhD at Oxford in health data science. His dissertation focuses on the question: How can we analyze data from antibody-testing studies to understand how many people have been infected and chart a course toward听herd immunity?
It鈥檚 an extraordinarily complex question that Arora has a knack for explaining with clarity and relevance.
Serosurveys are research studies that test people for antibodies, checking how many people in a population have been infected or vaccinated for a disease. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many researchers were doing these studies, but nobody was putting this data together in one place. Enter SeroTracker 鈥 a database which puts together findings from thousands of these serosurveys.听
鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to chart our path towards herd immunity and out of this pandemic,鈥 says Arora. 鈥淏y putting together data from serosurveys, we can build an up-to-date, comprehensive picture of what the state of infection and immunity look like worldwide.鈥
The typical way to bring together findings from a lot of studies would be to do a systematic literature review. Such studies, however, can take years to complete and publish, and are thus challenging to adapt to the swiftly moving pandemic context. In contrast, SeroTracker maintains the rigour of this approach, but allows people to access data as it becomes available and build on it for their own work.
What鈥檚 novel about the SeroTracker is the fashion in which Arora and his team have stitched together this systematic approach to data-gathering with modern dashboards and data pipelines, creating a data platform that is always up to date.
鈥淲e search medical databases, but also scour the web for government reports and news articles, and add new knowledge on a weekly basis,鈥 says Arora. 鈥淲e make this information available right away on our dashboard so that researchers, public health officials, and institutes like the World Health Organization can better inform their research and decision-making.鈥
Last month, Arora 鈥 who is currently in Calgary and will return to Oxford in the fall 鈥 was selected as one of 10 草莓污视频导航 Peak Scholars in COVID-19 Innovation Excellence. 鈥Rahul has brought together an incredible team of students from all over the globe to create SeroTracker,鈥 says Dr. Tyler Williamson, PhD, an associate professor of biostatistics in the Department of Community Health Sciences who has been working closely with Arora.
Under Rahul鈥檚 leadership this amazing team has created the world鈥檚 best source of sero-surveillance data for COVID-19.
The SeroTracker information, says Williamson, has been used by the Canadian Immunity Task Force, the World Health Organization, the Gates Foundation and many other organizations. 鈥淩ahul is already establishing an international reputation of excellence as a scientist and he hasn鈥檛 even finished his doctoral training!鈥
Since 2014 the Peak Scholars program has celebrated the accomplishments of over 200 scholars at the 草莓污视频导航. These are scholars whose academic work in knowledge engagement, entrepreneurship, tech transfer, innovation or collaborative research has resulted in a positive social or economic impact in our communities.听
Canadian听Innovation Week at听草莓污视频导航听听
As part of听草莓污视频导航鈥檚听partnership with the Rideau Hall Foundation, we are celebrating Canadian Innovation Week. Join听草莓污视频导航听experts and researchers May 17-21听for a week of conversation, inspiration and ideas.听
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