COVID-19

Working closely with partner research institutions and the private sector, RENCI is adapting and extending its existing capabilities to accelerate COVID-19 response and research efforts. RENCI researchers are leaders in data science and in data-driven discoveries, and we want to use those talents to assist the larger international effort to slow the spread of the virus and search for treatments.

At a high level, our work in the area of COVID-19 research aims to:

  • Apply linked open data, including biomedical ontologies, to build in silico knowledge models of drugs, processes, and systems involved in the coronavirus disease and related diseases.
  • Present aggregated clinical statistical models and an open, privacy-preserving framework to expose, share, and analyze data on clinical correlates of disease and outcomes, environmental exposures, socio-economic indicators, and genotype data.
  • Provision notebook-based analytical environments with big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence capabilities to support access to the growing body of COVID-19 related datasets, as well as tools to analyze and explore the data.

COVID-19 Articles

  • New concept poised to accelerate drug discovery through data mining June 24, 2022- RENCI scientists and collaborators have developed and defined a concept called Clinical Outcome Pathways (COPs) that could help scientists harness the vast amounts of clinical and biomedical data available today to accelerate drug discovery and drug repurposing.
  • RENCI’s Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Support Team introduces updated research resources May 16, 2022- The Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Support (ACIS) team at RENCI works to provide efficient, available resources for our researchers. Over the last several months, the team has introduced several new capabilities and tools that support researchers in successfully producing results from their computing research.
  • ROBOKOP technology offers faster, easier exploration of emerging COVID-19 research July 14, 2020- RENCI scientists have developed new tools and approaches that can help researchers make important discoveries and answer key questions about COVID-19 in record time.
  • New digital laboratory helps get COVID-19 analyses up and running quickly June 19, 2020- Data analysis and visualization are helping answer a variety of questions about COVID-19 such as who is most at risk, how is the disease spreading, and what approaches might work best for treatments. However, setting up a computer environment to analyze the large amounts of data needed to answer such questions is no easy task. […]
  • Professor learns new lessons while teaching during a pandemic June 11, 2020- When UNC students left for spring break on March 9, the COVID-19 public health crisis was just heating up. Soon after, UNC administrators made the decision to move to remote teaching and extended the break by a week to give instructors time to prepare. RENCI Deputy Director Ashok Krishnamurthy was one of many UNC professors who made the quick transition to teaching via video conferencing on Zoom.
  • Beyond data: Supporting community during a pandemic May 19, 2020- When COVID-19 cases began to appear across the country, many RENCI employees felt a call to action. While several took it upon themselves to develop new data science technologies or to adapt existing ones to process COVID-19 data, others have contributed to communities in need by creating face masks, assisting food banks, connecting researchers to projects, and supporting foster youth.
  • From the Director: RENCI responds to the COVID-19 crisis April 7, 2020- The past few weeks have presented unique challenges to how we work, how we enjoy ourselves, and how we live our everyday lives. We are all worried about the uncertainties and about how this will affect us and our loved ones in the coming weeks.  That being said, I am proud to work at RENCI […]