Chemical Engineering Seminar Series: Prof. Arni S. R. Srinivasa Rao

The first AI model for COVID-19 identification.

When COVID-19 cases were reported in late 2019 December in the mainland of China there was confusion about possible spread outside China. Countries like India and the US have seen a rise in the reported cases only in March 2020 after several countries in Europe have seen the first wave of the pandemic. The first AI-based model was developed by the speaker in February 2020 that can help trace COVID-19 cases through mobile-based Apps when individuals are in quarantine. That model helped to develop several such Apps across the world and received wide attention. This talk will focus technicalities of the AI model in medical settings, clinical collaborations conducted, and translational aspects of the same in real-world implementation.

Bio:

Arni S. R. Srinivasa Rao is a Professor and Director of the Laboratory for Theory and Mathematical Modeling, at Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, USA. Until 2012, he held a permanent faculty position at Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. In more than 700 instances his science was covered in the media. His work directly impacted research in Artificial Intelligence, medicine, public health, mathematics, poultry farmers, and civil and computer engineering sciences. He conducted research and/or taught at several institutions, such as the Indian Statistical Institute, the Indian Institute of Science, Hiroshima University, and the University of Oxford. Dr. Rao’s mathematical models assisted in the national AIDS control planning in India. He proposed and developed the first artificial intelligence (AI)-based model in the world in February 2020 to identify COVID-19 cases using mobile-based Apps. That work later inspired several such Apps all over the world during the COVID-19 pandemic including the Arogya setu app. Among other committees, Dr. Rao is also currently serving as a member of the AI-enabled Technologies & Systems Domain Expert Group (DEG), constituted in 2021 by The Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), Government of India.