A Clark University physics professor has secured a $200,000 grant to study how coronavirus is transmitted, potential mitigation factors and how another pandemic might be avoided.
Arshad Kudrolli is the first member of the Worcester college’s faculty to receive funding to study the novel coronavirus. His funding came from the National Science Foundation.
Kudrolli’s research aims to address multidisciplinary strategies for virus transmission modeling, which can help learn more about how the virus has spread, according to the college. It will include analysis of existing data, experiments with a synthetic breathing apparatus, and computer simulations.
The goal of the research is to create a data-driven transmission model of COVID-19, including physical data on droplets released by breathing, sneezing, coughing and talking, including dispersion distance and how long the droplets remain on surfaces based on temperature, humidity and air flow.
Kudrolli is the director of Clark’s Complex Matter and Nonlinear Physics Laboratory. He joined the Clark faculty in 2008 and was elected an American Physical Society Fellow in 2010.
