Before the Covid-19 outbreak, it was common for scientists to meet and share ideas and experiences frequently. Mobility and social mixing were considered essential for the success of innovative research in the field of epidemiology.
To revive this effort in a safe way and to counter the loss of interpersonal, interdisciplinary exchange, the coordination and communications teams of the H2020 project MOnitoring Outbreak events for Disease surveillance in a data science context (MOOD) hosted an online MOOD 2020 Christmas Event on December 15, 2020.
The event recapped and highlighted the project’s achievements, peer-reviewed publications and COVID-19 research activities but also served as a way to mingle and reconnect, albeit virtually, for the team.
Scientist members of the project presented some of the key insights of their work during the event. Presentations included an overall project progress overview by MOOD Coordinators Elena Arseksva and Renaud Lancelot, Moritz’ Kraemer’s presentation on Digital Epidemiology of COVID-19, Marius Gilbert’s talk about a modelling study of African countries’ preparedness against importations of COVID-19, Sarah Valentin’s contributions about online media monitoring for early disease detection, and Giorgio Guzzetta’s insights on the impact of a nationwide lockdown in Italy.
Summarizing the research presented, Renaud Lancelot concluded: “Indeed, we can see there are two main activities that have been implemented [for all these] COVID-19 studies. One important [approach to develop is] on disease dynamics and to help providing tools to monitor diseases and to assess what can be the effect of control measures for example… and the other big [approach] was text mining and visual analytics approaches to detect disease emergence.”
He also emphasized that the researchers’ efforts and output and methods were quite generic and will be modified and further developed to be used for detection and monitoring of other diseases as well.
To see the full presentations by Elena and Renaud, please find the slides at the bottom of this post in PDF or ppt format.
Sarah Valentin and Marius Gilbert also sat down with MOOD Communications in the days after the event to answer further questions about their presentations and findings.
Following the informative presentations attendants dove into the well-deserved festivities, rung in by the French rock ‘n’ roll band Raoul Petite.