Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (
) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
Read the Report
In the last nine months, the world has seen the emergence of information technologies designed to provide portable proximity detection for the purpose of limiting the spread of respiratory infectious diseases. These technologies include wearables that provide alerts when social distance is not maintained, mobile applications that enable coordination with public health officials to provide exposure notification and/or augment manual contact tracing, and the use of encounter metrics to inform space occupancy limits and environmental controls management. Efforts to address questions about effectiveness and privacy risks are taking place within non-profit organizations, academia, commercial entities, public health and government organizations.
This workshop is a forum to discuss successes and challenges associated with implementation of proximity detection technologies and identify areas in which additional effort is required. These areas could be, but are not limited to, privacy and cybersecurity concerns, testbeds, machine learning algorithms, efficacy modelling, new technologies, data and standards, validation and verification, and commercialization. We invite the community of stakeholders to participate in the workshop by sharing their views on future needs for this rapidly developing discipline. The first day features speakers on a variety of aspects of proximity detection and the existing challenges. The second day features a panel discussion and facilitated break-out sessions that provide opportunity for community engagement on ways to overcome the challenges presented in the first day. The final day features a reports from the break-out session and a wrap-up discussion.
NIST welcomes the submission of technical abstracts for 10-minute oral presentations. Please submit a 1-page abstract by e-mail to: NIST-workshop-pandemic-technologies [at] nist.gov (NIST-workshop-pandemic-technologies[at]nist[dot]gov) no later than 12 PM EST, Jan. 4, 2021. Please include presenter first and last name, affiliation, contact e-mail address, and title. Submissions covering any aspect of portable proximity detection are welcome. Specific target areas include, but are not limited to:
- Epidemiological modeling of the efficacy of electronic proximity detection
- Public health needs related to electronic proximity detection
- Ranging technologies
- Privacy considerations
- Machine learning algorithms
- Validation and verification
- Commercialization
- Data and standards
- Testbeds
Invited Speaker and Panelist Bios
Agenda
Day 1: Tuesday, January 26, 2021
| 10:00 AM ET | Welcome and Opening Remarks |
| 10:10 AM ET |
Who should you be talking to? 3 lessons in interdisciplinary problem-solving Joanna Masel, Professor, Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona |
| 10:55 AM ET |
A Brief Tutorial on Private Automated Exposure Notification for COVID-19 Marc Zissman, Associate Head, Cyber Security and Information Sciences Division, Lincoln Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| 11:25 AM ET | Break |
| 11:28 AM ET |
Real-world effectiveness of digital contact tracing Luca Ferretti, Senior Researcher in Statistical Genetics and Pathogen Dynamics at the Big Data Institute, University of Oxford |
| 11:50 AM ET |
The SwissCovid GAEN app after six months: It’s not just about technology. Viktor von Wyl, Assistant Professor, Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute, University of Zurich |
| 12:47 PM ET |
Public acceptance of emerging technologies Alta Charo, Knowles Professor Emerita of Law & Bioethics, University of Wisconsin Madison |
| 1:09 PM ET |
Public health perspective of digital contact tracing in COVID-19 using Bluetoothenabled technology Meghna Patel, Deputy Secretary for Health Resources and Services, Pennsylvania Department of Health |
| 1:31 PM ET | Break |
| 1:40 PM ET | Transition/introduction of speakers |
| 1:45 PM ET |
Privacy considerations, an overview Naomi Lefkovitz, Senior Privacy Policy Advisor, Information Technology Lab, NIST |
| 2:07 PM ET |
Privacy preserving protocols for encounter metrics Rene Peralta, Computer Scientist, Cryptographic Technology Group, NIST |
| 2:19 PM ET |
Privacy by Design as Infrastructural Power Seda Gürses, Associate Professor, Department of Multi-Actor Systems at TU Delft |
| 2:41 PM ET | Transition/introduction of speakers |
| 2:45 PM ET |
Flipping the Perspective on Contact Tracing Po-Shen Loh, Founder of NOVID, Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, and National Coach of USA International Math Olympiad team |
| 3:07 PM ET |
Machine learning based digital proximity detection: lessons learned from the NIST TC4TL Challenge and beyond Omid Sadjadi, Computer Scientist, Information Technology Lab, NIST |
| 3:30 PM ET |
Adjourn for the Day |
Day 2: Wednesday, January 27, 2021
| 10:00 am ET |
Panel discussion on the effectiveness of digital proximity detection at limiting the spread of infectious diseases
|
|
11:30 am ET |
Instructions for breakout sessions |
|
11:40 am ET |
Break |
| 12:00 PM ET |
Breakout Sessions 1a. Applications of proximity detection What are the different ways proximity detection can be used to limit the spread of pandemics (digital contact tracing, encounter metrics, etc.)? Facilitator: Leah Kauffman 1b. Privacy 1 How are privacy risks generated by proximity detection technologies understood and managed? Facilitator: Jessica Staymates 1c. Technologies for Proximity Detection How accurately can different technologies identify a contagious interaction? Facilitator: Ashley Boggs 1d. Role of government What role should local, state, and federal government play in digital contact tracing? Facilitator: Brandi Tolliver |
| 1:30 PM ET | Break |
| 2:00 PM ET |
Breakout Sessions 2a. Implementation What adoption rate is needed to be effective in different communities? What are the barriers to adoption and use, and how should they be addressed? Facilitator: Jeanita Pritchett 2b. Privacy 2 What are the greatest challenges to achieving strong privacy properties while delivering effective proximity detection? How can privacy gains or losses be understood with different implementations? Facilitator: Jessica Staymates 2c. Technology verification What is needed to verify the performance of proximity detection technologies? Facilitator: Callie Higgins 2d. Commercialization What are the barriers to commercialization? Facilitator: Jeremy Lawson |
| 3:00 PM ET | Adjourn for the day. |
Day 3: Thursday, January 28, 2021
| 10:00 AM ET |
Reports from working groups (10 minutes each) Moderator: Heather Evans, Program Coordination Office, National Institute of Standards and Technology |
| 11:30 AM ET |
Contributed Talks Moderator: Michelle Stephens, Applied Physics Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology 11:30 am Privacy-Protecting COVID-19 Exposure Notification Via Cluster Events Without Proximity Detection Paul Syverson, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory 11:42 am Augmenting GAEN with opt-in case linking James Petrie, WeHealth 11:54 am Adoption metrics for Proximity Technologies Scott David, Director of Information Risk Research Initiative (IRRI), University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory 12:06 pm Modeling the impact of automatic exposure notification for vulnerable communities Krister Shalm, Applied Physics Division, NIST and Physics Department, University of Colorado Boulder 12:18 pm Understanding and Rewiring Epidemic Networks: A Data-driven Approach Towards Enabling Quarantine in-Motion, Radu Marculescu, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin
|
| 12:30 PM ET | Break |
| 1:00 PM ET |
Contributed Talks Moderator: Michelle Stephens, Applied Physics Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology 1:00 pm Interoperable Privacy Preserving Digital Contact Tracing Yang Yaling, Virginia Tech 1:12 pm Function Secret Sharing for PSI-CA: With Applications to Private Contact Tracing Steve Lu, Stealth Software Technologies, Inc. 1:24 pm Modelling multipath interference for BLE proximity detection and exposure scoring Ramsey Faragher, CEO Focal Point Positioning, Fellow in Computer Science, Queen’s College, University of Cambridge 1:36 pm COSMOS Testbed – Proximity Detection and Social Distancing Estimation in COVID-19 Pandemic Zoran Kostic, Electrical Engineering Dept., Columbia University 1:48 pm A Simplistic Machine Learning Approach to Contact Tracing Niamh Belton, ML-Labs, University College Dublin 2:00 pm The Feasibility of Co-location Detection through a Deep Learning Fusion of Mobile Sensors Sheshank Shankar, Data Science Researcher, PathCheck Foundation 2:12 pm Entropy Based Discretization's and Weight Optimization for Configuring the GAEN system Nicholas Maynard, The MITRE Corporation 2:24 pm Efficacy of Current Approaches and An Alternative Paradigm for Digital Contact Tracing Brian Thompson, MITRE Corporation |
| 2:36 PM ET | Break |
| 2:45 PM ET |
Discussion and Summary Moderator: Heather Evans, Program Coordination Office, National Institute of Standards and Technology |
| 3:30 PM ET | Adjourn. |
View Detailed PDF.