A William & Mary mathematician and an undergraduate student are part of a team that has developed an interactive, user-friendly dashboard tracking COVID-19 infections and deaths across the U.S.

GuanNan Wang, who is a professor in the university’s Department of Mathematics, and Yuan Gu ’20 are both members of a research team based at Iowa State University. The dashboard is itself just the public-facing aspect of a larger set of scientific models used by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

They explained that the Dashboard offers a seven-day rolling forecast and a four-month projection of coronavirus infection/death count at both state and county levels.
Wang said:
“Gu started with the development of the mobile app, based on the Android system.”
“Right now, he is focusing on the functions and queries related to the app, We look forward to releasing the app quite soon.”

It provides real-time analysis with COVID-19 infection and fatality data from John Hopkins University, The New York Times, The Atlantic, USAFacts, the World Health Organization and the CDC. County-specific data, which includes information about a variety of local features, is gathered from state and county health departments, local databases, census data, mobility data, government press releases and the U.S. Department of Transportation.

“We delve deep into the dynamics of these counties. We even analyze the number of hospital beds in the area, the healthcare infrastructure and local healthcare expenditures,” Lily Wang said in the Iowa State release. “Detailed, county-specific modeling provides a thorough and richer understanding of how COVID-19 is impacting local communities.”

Gu, who is a math and computer science double major, is now a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University. He is developing a mobile version of the dashboard under Wang’s mentorship who is a professor.