University of Peradeniya : COVID Research Group

Overview

• Overview of research by Prof. Janaka Ekanayake (at FITI 2020 keynote).
  
  

Research areas

We conduct research in the following thrusts.

1. Artificial Intelligence to model and forecast the spread of COVID-19:
   We are developing algorithms to predict the COVID-19 case counts, outbreaks and severity on different scenarios. We also attemp to quantify the differential impact of COVID-19 on different communities and individuals.
   
   
2. Computer vision for combatting COVID Pandemic:
   We are developing computer vision pipelines to asses the risk and suggest preventive measures for COVID-19 transmission in different scenarios.
   
   [PDF Slides, Code]
3. Data science for combatting Dengue Pandemic:
   Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral infection that has grown rapidly in recent decades. It has become a challenge to health authorities in the country for years. Our intention is to develop an effective mechanism to model and forecast the propagation of the disease with the objective of assisting the prevention, management, and surveillance of the disease.
   Similar to every infectious disease, Dengue fever also exhibits unique natural characteristics. Analysis of the characteristics and the behavior of disease propagation approaches to forecast the trend in future disease spread. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is capable of identifying the patterns in disease propagation itself and its relationship with several other time variants and time invariant factors to track the trend of the disease.
   We worked on utilizing AI techniques as a Dengue prediction tool to model and forecast the propagation. This study proposes three AI related models for analyzing the propagation of Dengue fever in Sri Lanka which could be utilized to warn the authorities and the public to take necessary steps to minimize the spread.
   
   1. Temporal prediction model
   2. Spatial prediction model
   3. Risk Analysis
4. Mobile sensing
   Developing systems and algorithms to sense human movement/interaction from noisy mobile phone signals.