Purdue, Microsoft Create Tool to Determine COVID Impact on Research

Purdue University is partnering with Microsoft on a tool designed to get a better understanding of how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting research efforts. The university says the COVID-19 application allows researchers to receive data that quantifies the financial impact caused by the pandemic, which could potentially be used to secure additional relief funding to continue the affected projects.

In an interview with Inside INdiana Business, Purdue Senior Director of Sponsored Programs Ken Sandel said the effort started with a model of the impact, but that wasn’t enough.

“We felt we didn’t have a clear indication of the impact because even though some people were working remotely, if they were doing computational-based research, their work continued; they were just working in a different location,” said Sandel. “And so we determined that we needed a little bit more granular data that would help us get down to the impact on a project-by-project basis.”

Sandel says the more specific data is what the federal agencies that are supporting research projects would need if supplemental funding became available or if researchers request project extensions.

The COVID-19 Sponsored Program Impact Application combines Microsoft’s Power BI (business intelligence) application with the company’s Power Apps. Sandel says the tool is pre-populated with data from each research project, including payroll, and the principal investigators can indicate the lost progress on each project caused by the pandemic.

“Essentially, once they click submit, it’s loaded in the database and then we have access to do all reporting, all the integration of that data on a person basis, a departmental basis, a college basis, or grant-by-grant or type of sponsor,” said Sandel. 

Theresa Mayer, executive vice president for research and partnerships at Purdue, says the tool has already been put to good use.

“At this point, we have more than 1,100 faculty members on campus using the tool, and it is allowing us to get a clearer picture of how the COVID-19 event has affected our research programs,” Mayer said in a news release. “Until now, we have not been able to quantify impact at the research project level this efficiently. The program also allows researchers to indicate which researchers were reassigned to work on specific COVID-19 research projects so those efforts can be understood as well.”

Sandel says the tool could have additional benefits such as determining other impacts of COVID-19 as well as dealing with other types of disruptions.

“Whether it’s this type of a global impact or something even smaller scale, work gets interrupted,” said Sandel. “There are things that occur in the normal course of business that might be just a course correction or it might be something that is more significant. This would be a crisis tool or a measurement tool of some kind, but it’s adapted to almost any scenario.”

Purdue plans to roll out a modified version of the tool again on June 3 with the goal of receiving as close to 100% participation as possible to get a more accurate sense of the pandemic’s impact.

Sandel says Microsoft has the base version of the tool that can be modified for other institutions throughout the country looking to assess the impact on their own research efforts.