Based on how things are going with the coronavirus, I’ve decided that trying to work for a casino right now is probably just a bad idea. And so I’m going to volunteer with the Southern Nevada Health District. What exactly this will look like is still kind of open. The lead data scientist suggested that doing COVID modeling would be helpful to them, and it kind of makes sense to me to go down that path. He gave me a couple links to explore:

• COVID-19 Mathematical Modeling (CDC)
• The Challenges of Modeling and Forecasting the Spread of COVID-19 (PNAS)

The CDC link goes to a generic front page, but there seems to be plenty of depth, including links to different modeling groups that are not only supplying models but also have a lot of links to data and other papers. This is something that looks like it could turn into a rabbit trail of ideas (which isn’t a bad thing for me). The PNAS paper surveys some of the basic modeling techniques that are being used and provides a ton of links that should have information about fitting the parameters.

I told the SNHD that I was thinking of it like an internship opportunity. My intention is to start in mid-late August and roll for about 20 hours a week until late November or early December, which would correspond to a semester-long internship opportunity.