HELP ON COVID-19 FOR NAVAJO NATION
Researchers at NMHU use artifical intelligence to slow virus on the Navajo Nation
N.M. Highlands University gets a National Science Foundation grant to do analysis in effort to slow spread of disease on reservation.
LAS VEGAS, N.M. -- New Mexico Highlands University will use the latest machine learning and artificial intelligence data analysis aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus on the Navajo Nation, thanks to a National Science Foundation grant.
The NSF awarded Highlands a “rapid-response” $187,094 grant earlier this month. Highlands wrote the grant proposal in approximately two weeks of intense work in April, and it extends until May 2021.
“Many of the COVID-19 studies are using traditional methods to analyze the data,” said Gil Gallegos, the Highlands computer science professor and principal investigator, or lead researcher, for the NSF grant. “Our group will be pushing the limits on the way machine learning and artificial intelligence can be used for understanding the data.”
Gallegos said hopefully what is learned from a close examination of the data will reveal important factors that either accelerate or slow down the spread of the coronavirus on the Navajo Nation.
“We’ll hand off our scientific results to the Navajo Nation with the goal of helping mitigate the spread of coronavirus now and in the future,” Gallegos said.
Gallegos said machine learning and artificial intelligence are under the same umbrella in computer science.
“Machine learning is using computer algorithms for calculations used to analyze, predict and classify complex data sets, such as those found in COVID-19 data. With these methods, we hope to tease out important features we obtain through the public domain data.
“The use of artificial intelligence computer science methods, sometimes called deep learning, will give us more horsepower to really dig into the data in a way that has not been done before. We hope to successfully gather and analyze the existing data in a novel and beneficial way,” Gallegos said.
According to the New Mexico Department of Health website as of May 6, nearly 56% of the confirmed 4,291 plus COVID-19 cases in New Mexico are Native Americans, predominantly Navajo. Native Americans are less than 10.5% of the state’s population. The Navajo Nation covers portions of McKinley, Sandoval and San Juan counties.
Gallegos said the Highlands research will focus on socioeconomic and cultural factors that the National Science Foundation identifies as contributing to the spread of the coronavirus in indigenous populations.
Gallegos, who chairs the Computer and Mathematical Sciences Department at Highlands, leads the team of researchers at the university that will delve into the COVID-19 data from the Navajo Nation. Other team members include Orit Tamir, anthropology professor, and Tatiana Timofeeva, chemistry professor, both of whom are co-principal investigators. In addition, five computer science graduate students will participate in the research.
“We couldn’t be happier with our research team,” Gallegos said.
Tamir will work on correspondence and communication with the Navajo Nation, where she has developed close ties through her cultural anthropology research with the Navajo people for more than three decades.
“We plan to use publicly available data – no fieldwork – for our research,” Tamir said. “I’ll be responsible for collecting and creating a database that focuses on Navajo COVID-19 infection according to various parameters like socioeconomic and cultural.