Siqi Zheng, Samuel Tak Lee Professor of Real Estate Development and Entrepreneurship for DUSP and the Center for Real Estate is one of six faculty from MIT awarded research funding from MassCPR to address Covid-19. The research is in collaboration with Marc Lipsitch at Harvard, Eli Fenichel at Yale and Jude Bayham at Colorado State University, and Sustainable Urbanization Lab researchers, Juan Palacios Temprano and Jianghao Wang.
The study, “Quantify the role of social distancing in shaping the COVID-19 curve: incorporating adaptive behavior and preference shifts in epidemiological models using novel Big Data in 344 Chinese cities” will be carried out over the next 12 months. Zheng calls the funding “crucial” in research that will compare different regions and how people react to social and physical distancing during a pandemic and will examine various government policies aimed at controlling the spread of the virus.
