Uncertainty about COVID-19 transmission rates has been one of the major challenges for health care systems in the United States and around the world.

UCLA mathematics professors Andrea Bertozzi and Mason Porter will use mathematical modeling, incorporating the specific features of COVID-19, to provide insights to those who are developing strategies to mitigate the spread of the disease.

Bertozzi and Porter have been awarded a $200,000 rapid-response research grant from the National Science Foundation, which has called for proposals with the potential to address the spread of COVID-19.

Many public health and infectious disease experts believe the actual transmission of COVID-19 is likely much higher than what has been publicly reported. The UCLA project will extend prior research on contagions, factoring in multiple transmission methods, human behavior patterns, current data and more. It also will provide training for a postdoctoral scholar, a doctoral student and two undergraduates.

Bertozzi and her research team have already published a preprint of a research paper on the challenges of modeling and forecasting the spread of COVID-19, and she and Porter are conducting research on another related paper as part of the project.

Bertozzi holds UCLA’s Betsy Wood Knapp Chair for Innovation and Creativity.

The award is co-funded by NSF programs in applied mathematics and computational mathematics and its office of multidisciplinary activities.