Covid Research Panel
Hongfu Liu, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
Brandeis University
(September 25, 2020)
Prediction around Covid-19 – who will get it, how they will get it – is an essential part of the strategy to end the pandemic. A deeper understanding of the virus is needed to build accurate prediction models. Questions such as what proteins are involved and what species are susceptible are all vital pieces of the puzzle. Dr. Liu made use of existing knowledge of coronaviruses and the animals who carry them to build the model CrossNELP. This model was able to predict six other species potentially vulnerable to infection and twelve protein interactions between the virus and humans, which could play a part in predicting infection.