Opportunities to Collaborate

Project: Diagnostic Testing and Epidemiological Analysis

Requestor: Krishna Narayanan

Krishna Narayanan is writing to seek your help in identifying a consultant/collaborator from the department of public health/college of medicine to hear her out on an idea to use group testing to reduce the number of tests required to identify sick patients. Group testing was originally intended for this purpose and is very closely connected to coding theory/compressed sensing. 

She is working on a short one-pager to send to NSF in response to their CFP for RAPID proposals in response to COVID.She has some simple questions about how testing for COVID works and if they like her idea she would be interested in collaborating with them on the proposal. 

Project: Legal Epidemiology

Requestors: Sandra Braman

For a legal epidemiology project on law as a factor in the cause, distribution, and prevention of COVID-19, with a particular focus on COVID-19-related research and practice, informants are sought who are willing to participate in a short call (approximately 15 minutes, 1:1) identifying ways in which laws, regulations, policy implementation programs, and private sector decision-making (such as that by social media platforms and by insurance companies) are affecting your COVID-19-related research and practice as well as laws, regulations, and private sector decision-making that would improve conditions for your work.

Project: Long Term Anti-viral Activity of a Topical Disinfectant

Requestor: Ken Ramos

Ken Ramos has established a collaboration with a company to evaluate long term anti-viral activity of a topical disinfectant. Please contact him for collaboration to test this compound.

Project: Labs to Produce Viral Transport Media

Requestor: Chantel Robinson

There is a critical shortage of Viral Transport Medium (VTM) and a huge opportunity for TAMU labs to provide some relief to this need. The ingredients include Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS), Hanks Balanced Salt Solution (HBSS), PF Sterile Water Vials, Gentamicin Sulfate and Amphotericin B. If you believe you could participate, please contact Chantel Robinson and further instructions will be provided. She is creating a list of potential laboratory sites and determining how this may be implemented.

Project: Collaborators for PRNT

Requestor: Gabe Hamer

Call for collaborative projects that could benefit from utilizing the Plaque Reduction Neutralization Test (PRNT) for COVID-19, considered the gold standard serological assay. Types of diagnostic and research projects which could benefit include: 1) validation of commercially available ELISA kits for humans, 2) providing community/epidemiology support by providing data on the prevalence of human exposure to SARS-CoV-2, 3) evaluation of the exposure of companion animals (cats and dogs) to SARS-CoV-2. While building the capacity to address the above topics, we are interested in collaborating with others by building additional projects that could benefit from this work.

Project: Collaborators to Use Quantum Biophotonics to Detect Trace Amounts of COVID-19 viral particles and antibody

Requestor: Marlan Scully

A call for collaborators to utilize extremely high-resolution approaches to enhance detection systems for COVID-19 antibody and viral particles utilizing Raman spectroscopy, fiber optic detection systems, and gold nanoparticle-based ELISA. A variety of projects are being pursued by the group and collaboration is welcomed.