Fellows of the Royal Society and people that we fund are contributing to the UK and global effort to tackle Coronavirus COVID-19.
The Royal Society has used its convening power to support efforts to model the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and guide the UK’s response. The Rapid Assistance in Modelling the Pandemic (RAMP) initiative has brought modelling expertise from a diverse range of disciplines to support the pandemic modelling community already working on Coronavirus (COVID-19).
An initial call for volunteers led to an overwhelming response with 1800 individuals and teams offering to help.
RAMP is designed to; provide support for existing research groups; create new models or insights that can be used to inform the work of the Government’s scientific advisors, through data science-based approaches; apply knowledge from related epidemiology domains; and triage incoming literature to ensure effective information flows.
The goal of RAMP was to enhance modelling capacity in time to create a clearer understanding of different exit strategies from the current lockdown. RAMP operates beside Data Evaluation and Learning for Viral Epidemics (DELVE), a multi-disciplinary group, convened by the Royal Society, to support a data-driven approach to learning from the different approaches being taken in other countries to tackle the pandemic and SET-C a group drawing on the expertise of our Fellows and others to respond to requests for rapid science advice on topics relevant to tackling the pandemic.
The RAMP initiative was initially set up to run until July but many of the volunteers and projects are still making significant contributions and will continue to do so.
29 April 2020: Update from Peter Bruce FRS
If you are a researcher and would like to find out more about the work of RAMP