Events & Activities

CCRP2 hosts monthly Research-In-Progress meetings from Rutgers faculty spanning basic, clinical, public health, and translational COVID-19 research. These meetings take place on Tuesdays, 12 – 1 pm according to the schedule below. Webex and Zoom links for these meetings are shared on the CCRP2 mailing list. Please email Amariliz Rivera or Jason Yang if you are interested in sharing your research during one of these meetings.

• Oct. 20, 2020: David Alland, M.D. (Director, CCRP2)
• Nov. 10, 2020: Peter Romanienko, Ph.D. (Comparative Medicine Resources), Amariliz Rivera, PhD (Co-Chair, COVID Research Alliance) – Basic Research
• Jan. 19, 2021: Martin J. Blaser, M.D. (Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine), Maria L. Gennaro, M.D. (Public Health Research Institute) – Clinical, Public Health Research
• Feb. 9, 2021: Henry Raymond, Dr.Ph. (Associate Director of Public Health, CCRP2), Pratik Datta, Ph.D. (Public Health Research Institute) – Public Health Research
• Apr. 6, 2021: Hao Lin, Ph.D. (Mechanical Engineering), Abraham Pinter, Ph.D. (Public Health Research Institute) – Translational Research
• May 4, 2021: Emily Greenfield, Ph.D. (School of Social Work), Sarah Allred, Ph.D. (Rutgers–Camden Psychology) – Social Sciences Research
• Jun. 1, 2021: Hong Li, Ph.D. (NJMS Microbiology, Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics) – Basic, Clinical Research
• Jun. 29, 2021: Pamela de Cordova, Ph.D. (School of Nursing) – Public Health Research
• Jul. 27, 2021: Stephanie Shiau, Ph.D. (School of Public Health), Slawa Rokicki, PhD (School of Public Health) – Public Health Research
• Aug. 24, 2021: Selvakumar Subbian, Ph.D. (Public Health Research Institute) – Basic Research
• Sept. 21, 2021: TBD – Translational Research

CCRP2 hosts a monthly seminar series with exciting guest speakers, each of whom is making pioneering contributions to our understanding of COVID-19 pathogenesis, diagnosis, or treatment. These seminars take place on Thursdays, 11 am – 12 pm according to the schedule below. Webex and Zoom links for these meetings are shared on the CCRP2 mailing list.

Seminar Series Schedule

• Nov 12: Shane Crotty, Ph.D. (La Jolla Institute for Immunology)
• Jan 14: Galit Alter, Ph.D. (Harvard Medical School)
• Feb 11: Max Seibold, Ph.D. (National Jewish Health)
• Mar 11: Vincent Munstere, Ph.D. (NIH-NIAID)
• Apr 8: Akiko Iwasaki, Ph.D. (Yale University)
• May 13: Nevan Krogan, Ph.D. (UC San Francisco), Jacqueline Fabius (Quantitative Biosciences Institute)

CCRP2 hosts a weekly journal club to discuss recent findings on COVID-19 immunology and pathogenesis. These meetings take place most Tuesdays from 12 – 1 pm. Please contact Yosuke Kumamoto for more information on how to present and participate.

The Society and Pandemic Working Group is a Rutgers faculty-led platform that came together in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. It has brought together interdisciplinary scholars from departments across Rutgers’ three campuses (Camden, Newark, New Brunswick) to share knowledge about research and pedagogy during the pandemic. Their goal is to build collaborative networks across disciplines, with a focus on the social sciences and humanities.

The Rutgers AI and Pandemics Initiative is organized around a transdisciplinary group of faculty including over 30 faculty members from Public Health, Psychiatry, the Cancer Institute of NJ, the DIMACS Center, The Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Engineering, Law, Business, Library and Information Science, Urban Planning and Public Policy, Philosophy, English, Institutes related to homeland security and secure communities, and others.

The group’s work is organized around three questions:

1. How can AI help in the current pandemic?
2. How can AI help prevent, predict, and mitigate future pandemics?
3. What ethical issues arise from the application of AI to pandemics?

Ideas and Futures is an interdisciplinary platform that has emerged as a response to the COVID-19 crisis with a focus on re-imagining our societies beyond the pandemic. Their website showcases scholarly reflections, art, literary essays and expressions, cultural, social and political commentaries and analyses for international and U.S.-based audiences with the belief that literary, artistic, and reflective endeavors are crucial to creating just and vital societies.

The pandemic is a societal crisis across the globe. The crisis of public health lies at the intersection of a series of systemic social contradictions and failures, which reverberate across global healthcare systems, politics, economies, and daily life. As such, the social repercussions of this pandemic will last far beyond the medical emergency and will shape our societies for decades to come.

The Institute for Quantitative Biomedicine has established a COVID-19 Research Working Group (RWG) under the leadership of Sagar Khare. The RWG convenes regular virtual meetings for Rutgers researchers working on COVID-19 to provide a forum for exchanging ideas and facilitating exchange of reagents, etc. The RWG also liaises periodically with a similar effort at UCSF.

With support from the Institute for Quantitative Biology, several other working groups have formed, focusing on various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. These working groups meet regularly and host more specialized COVID-19 research events and activities. Please contact the following individuals if you are interested in joining a working group on any of the following topics:

• Anti-Viral Drugs - Stephen Burley, Eddy Arnold
• Communication and [Mis]information - Shuchi Dutta, Khadijah White
• Coronavirus Biology - Arnold Rabson, Michael Mathews
• Data Science and Informatics - Soko Setoguchi, Saed Sayad
• Epidemiology - Sijian Wang, Stanley Weiss
• Vaccines - Hao Lin, Renping Zhou