Award Abstract # 2028999
RAPID: COVID Information Commons (CIC)

NSF Org: ITE
Innovation and Technology Ecosystems
Recipient: THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK
Initial Amendment Date: May 5, 2020
Latest Amendment Date: January 31, 2022
Award Number: 2028999
Award Instrument: Standard Grant
Program Manager: Jemin George
jgeorge@nsf.gov  (703)292-2251
ITE  Innovation and Technology Ecosystems
TIP  Dir for Tech, Innovation, & Partnerships
Start Date: May 15, 2020
End Date: October 31, 2022 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $200,000.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $200,000.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2020 = $200,000.00
History of Investigator:
  • Florence Hudson (Principal Investigator)
     fh2417@columbia.edu
  • Jeannette Wing (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Jeannette Wing (Former Principal Investigator)
  • Florence Hudson (Former Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: Columbia University
 615 W 131ST ST
 NEW YORK
 NY  US  10027-7922
(212)854-6851
Sponsor Congressional District: 13
Primary Place of Performance: Columbia University
 550 West 120th Street
 New York
 NY  US  10027-6601
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:		 13
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): F4N1QNPB95M4
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): CA-HDR: Convergence Accelerato,
COVID-19 Research
Primary Program Source: 010N2021DB R&RA CARES Act DEFC N
Program Reference Code(s): 096Z, 7914, 9102
Program Element Code(s): 095Y00, 158Y00
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.083, 47.084
Note: This Award includes Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding.

ABSTRACT

This project will create a COVID Information Commons (CIC) website to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration across various COVID research efforts, especially focusing on all the NSF-funded COVID Rapid Response Research (RAPID) projects. The CIC will serve as a resource for researchers as well as decision-makers from government, academia, not-for-profit and industry to leverage each other's findings, and invest in and accelerate the most promising research to mitigate the broad societal impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. It will also serve as a model for integrated knowledge sharing and collaboration on other public health challenges, in benefit to society. Projects will be able to enter and publish information about their efforts in ways that are most relevant and user-friendly for a variety of potential stakeholders from academia, industry, government, and non-profit sectors. Information will be organized in multiple ways, for example, by research topics areas and by geography. In addition to information from NSF COVID-19 RAPID projects, the COVID Information Commons will incorporate coronavirus-related information from NSF Open Knowledge Network projects, as well as from other NSF research projects in general.

The COVID Information Commons will utilize information science methods to bring together information about the collection of COVID-19 RAPID projects funded by the National Science Foundation. A wide array of research efforts are underway to study the impacts of the pandemic in fields as far ranging as biophysics, social justice/inequity, behavioral science, public health, supply chains, and risk management. The CIC will semantically link information across projects to provide a more holistic view across distinct efforts, including efforts such as the COVID projects in the NSF Open Knowledge Network. The resulting, concise, curated, integrated resource will provide insight into NSF-funded COVID RAPID projects and facilitate collaborations among such efforts. These objectives will be achieved using information science approaches to 1) compile a comprehensive list of NSF COVID RAPID awards, along with relevant details for each project, 2) link to any publicly available data sets and data feeds, 3) organize the information and data feeds, for example, by categories of research areas and/or geography, using a meta-data schema developed for the resource and existing taxonomy and semantic frameworks; 4) design and develop a web portal to allow project teams to publish their data, or links to the data, and present project information in ways that are most relevant and user friendly for researchers in academia, industry, and government; 5) integrate the schema.org COVID-19 annotated data to enable more effective identification, retrieval, and integration of relevant data. A Minimum Viable Product for the website will be developed first, working with stakeholders in the community to prioritize features and add new functionality. In addition to the Information Commons, the project will also assess the effort and feasibility of implementing a data and model commons?to share datasets as well as data-driven models, such as machine learning models related to COVID-19.

This RAPID award is made by the Convergence Accelerator program in the Office of Integrative Activities with funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

The COVID Information Commons (CIC) (https://covidinfocommons.net) was funded in May 2020 through NSF RAPID award #2028999 and launched in July 2020 to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration across COVID research efforts, focusing on NSF-funded COVID Rapid Response Research (RAPID) projects. The CIC was developed as a collaborative project led by the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub (NEBDHub) (http://nebigdatahub.org/about/) hosted by Columbia University, in collaboration with the Midwest Big Data Innovation Hub (https://midwestbigdatahub.org/), South Big Data Innovation Hub (https://southbigdatahub.org/), and West Big Data Innovation Hub (https://www.westbigdatahub.org/). 

The CIC serves as an open portal and collaborative community for researchers, scientists, students and health policy decision-makers from government, academia, non-profit, and industry to discover and leverage research findings to mitigate the societal impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

The CIC team developed and deployed strategic programming, communications and curated resource collections which enable researcher collaboration. The CIC community grew to include 2,353 individuals from 657 organizations of various sectors through September 2022, spanning all regions of the U.S., including Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico, as well as 25 other countries. The CIC engages this community through social media, newsletters, and a regular program of webinars. The CIC team focuses on outreach to underserved and minority serving institutions, hence of the 384 higher education institutions in the CIC community, 21% (86) are Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). 

In October 2021, the CIC team was granted the CIC-E: COVID Information Commons Extension for Pandemic Recovery award (NSF #2139391) (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2139391). This funding supported the extension of the CIC to include more NSF awards, plus NIH awards related to COVID-19, as well as future additions to the CIC. 

The CIC Project Team developed several initiatives to support the project goals including:

- COVID Awards & Principal Investigator (PI) Database (https://cic-apps.datascience.columbia.edu/grants/) The COVID Awards & PI Database included 8,735 records of COVID-related NSF and NIH awards with PI and award details as of October 31, 2022. Researchers use the faceted search mechanism to discover awards browsing by NSF directorate, NIH institute or center, awardee organization, PI, and keyword, among other features. The CIC awards database is also searchable through the COVID Research Explorer ML Maps tool, which leverages the Lingo4G machine learning (ML) clustering software. The ML Maps tool enables users to explore the CIC database of awards by topical areas with a graphical user interface, enabling researcher collaboration. The ML Maps tool is available through the CIC homepage (https://covidinfocommons.net/).  

- COVID-19 Research Lightning Talks (https://covidinfocommons.datascience.columbia.edu/content/videos) Each month, the CIC brings together a group of researchers studying wide-ranging aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, to share their research and answer questions from our community. During these webinars, the CIC Project Team shares information about CIC resources and events, including opportunities for collaboration. Through October 2022, the CIC hosted 114 researcher lightning talks in 23 webinars, reaching 1,131 live participants and an additional 7,550 views on the NEBDHub YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/@NortheastBigDataInnovationHub).

- COVID-19 Accessibility Initiative (https://covidinfocommons.datascience.columbia.edu/content/meet-researchers) In February 2022, the CIC Project Team and student volunteers began a project to transcribe all past COVID-19 Research Lightning Presentations into written English as part of the NEBDHub's broader DEIA efforts (https://nebigdatahub.org/diversity-equity-inclusion-accessibility/). These transcriptions were also translated into Universal Spanish, broadening the program reach to include Spanish speaking members of the Hub and CIC community. CIC Lightning Talk Transcriptions and translations are also available on the NEBDHub YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/@NortheastBigDataInnovationHub) as closed captions, and in the Columbia Academic Commons with over 180 DOIs. 

- CIC Student Paper Challenge (https://covidinfocommons.datascience.columbia.edu/content/2022-cic-student-paper-challenge) In 2021, the inaugural CIC student paper challenge was launched, inviting undergraduate students to use the CIC research tools and resources to develop a short paper on a specific trend or topic in COVID-19 research that could contribute to key insights and future innovations. Winners of the 2021 CIC student paper challenge from Columbia University, University of California San Diego, and the University of Minnesota presented their research at CIC Research Lightning Talk webinars. The 2022 CIC Student Paper Challenge was expanded to include both graduate and undergraduate students. Winners in the Graduate student cohort were from Binghamton University, Columbia University and the University of Florida. The Undergraduate student cohort winners were from the University of South Africa and George Washington University, showing the global reach and broader impact of the CIC. The 2022 winners will present their research during the NEBDHub Student Research Symposium in January 2023.

- COVID-19 Datasets, Groups and Guides, Research Funding Opportunities, and Career & Professional Opportunities Listings. To support community research, career development and collaboration, the CIC portal includes opportunities and resources which the CIC Project Team and student assistants have collected and curated. These include 50+ COVID-19 related datasets from around the world (https://covidinfocommons.datascience.columbia.edu/content/datasets), lists of numerous research guides and organizations focused on COVID-19 (https://covidinfocommons.datascience.columbia.edu/content/groups-and-guides), research funding opportunities (https://covidinfocommons.datascience.columbia.edu/content/research-funding), publications (https://covidinfocommons.datascience.columbia.edu/content/news-and-publications), and career opportunities (https://nebigdatahub.org/health-fa/).


Last Modified: 01/09/2023
Modified by: Florence D Hudson

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