Members of the Department of Computer Science community involved with the #HowsMyFlattening effort, from left to right: Marzyeh Ghassemi, James Hooks, Amna Liaqat, and Seung Eun Yi.

A collaborative effort to share key information about COVID-19 in Ontario involves more than 150 volunteers, including faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students from U of T’s Department of Computer Science.

HowsMyFlattening.ca describes itself as a ‘virtual war room’ to gather and convey information about COVID-19 for Ontario decision makers and residents. The project makes use of data visualizations to convey the importance of flattening the epidemiological curve.

Professor Marzyeh Ghassemi serves on the four-member advisory team that brings together experts across clinical, scientific, and public health domains.

Seung Eun Yi, who recently completed the Master of Science in Applied Computing (MScAC) program, is building a comprehensive dataset that gathers all government interventions that have been put in place at provincial and municipal levels across Canada. She has also created visualizations to convey insights from the dataset.

"I was feeling very frustrated about the situation and was looking for any opportunity to help,” she recalls. “Being part of the project meant following the news even more closely, which was a little stressful at the beginning, but now I am happy that I can have a more active role facing the current situation by contributing to the project.”

“I really hope this project will help the research community and enable people to do a more thorough analysis on the effectiveness of different government interventions,” she says.

James Hooks, a fourth-year U of T computer science undergraduate student, volunteers on the development team, helping to automate the collection, transformation, and distribution of data from a long and often-changing list of sources.

Reflecting on the experience so far, Hooks says, “I'm pretty far removed from any public health fields so I jumped at this unique opportunity to use my skill set to contribute during this crisis and collaborate with such an incredible group of people. It's pretty easy to feel powerless right now, so being involved in some way has helped me cope with the stress of our situation, and I hope the work we're doing makes a difference in the information effort.”

Third-year computer science PhD student Amna Liaqat leads the front-end development of the website and has been working closely with designers to create clear, actionable visualizations using the data gathered for the project.

An educational technology researcher by training, Liaqat was excited by the prospect of applying her skills to a new challenge. “What drew me to this project was the opportunity to apply my non-domain-specific skills in an entirely different context. It’s been an enjoyable and educational experience taking what I’ve learned as a graduate researcher and applying it to an immediate, real-world challenge,” she says.

“What motivates me, and I’m sure motivates many of our team members, is that we keep receiving a bunch of great feedback from the public. People appreciate having a platform where Ontarians can easily access and understand what’s happening with COVID.”

Other contributors from the Department of Computer Science include PhD students Brenna Li and David Madras.

Interested in getting involved? Learn more about how you can help the #HowsMyFlattening team.