Bringing the R community together against COVID-19
Originally posted on the R Epidemics Consortium blog
We are proud to announce that the R Consortium has awarded RECON a grant for $23,300 to develop the RECON COVID-19 challenge, a project aiming to centralise, organise and manage needs for analytics resources in R to support the response to COVID-19 worldwide.
These resources will permit to expand our initial preliminary collection of github issues to create a user-friendly web platform gathering R tasks reflecting needs from different projects and groups, and facilitate contributions from the wider R programming community.
We are looking for two consultants (see ‘We need you!’ section below), including:
- a project manager to drive the project forward
- a web developer to create the website
The RECON COVID-19 challenge in a nutshell
The RECON COVID-19 challenge aims to bring together the infectious disease modelling, epidemiology and R communities to improve analytics resources for the COVID-19 response via a website which will provide a platform to centralise, curate and update R development tasks relevant to the COVID-19 response. Similar to the Open Street Map Tasking Manager (tasks.hotosm.org), this platform will allow potential contributors to quickly identify outstanding tasks submitted by groups involved in the response to COVID-19 and ensure that developments follow the highest scientific and technical standards.
While this project is aimed at leveraging R tools for helping to respond to COVID-19, we expect that it will lead to long-lasting developments of partnerships between the R and epidemiological communities, and that the resources developed will become key assets for supporting outbreak responses well beyond this pandemic.
For more details about the project, check out our initial project proposal.
We need you!
We are urgently looking for two consultants to get this project started. These two positions funded by the R Consortium include (click links for job descriptions):
You can apply to either position by sending us an email, attaching a recent CV, and a cover letter stating why you are interested in this project.
- closing date for applications: Monday 22nd June 2020, 12:00 UTC
- interviews: interviews will be held by members of the RECON board on Wednesday 24th June.