Matter and the universe

What planet research has to do with the coronavirus

Astrophysicist Kevin Heng and epidemiologist Christian Althaus worked together on a number of studies in 2020 and founded the interfaculty platform INPUT – because the spread of infectious diseases such as COVID-19 really does have something to do with exoplanetary chemistry.

The contact between the Center for Space and Habitability CSH and the Institute for Social and Preventive Medicine ISPM was established in 2018, as Kevin Heng, Director of the CSH, and Oscar Franco, who was then the new Director at the ISPM, had various discussions to explore a possible collaboration. Christian Althaus was also present at one of these meetings.

The COVID-19 pandemic then expedited the collaboration between astrophysicist Heng and epidemiologist Althaus to such an extent that they became jointly involved in two studies on COVID-19 and institutionalized the cross-faculty collaboration with the new INPUT platform.

Understanding celestial objects and people’s health

Astrophysics and epidemiology have little in common at first glance. From a methodological point of view, there are certainly overlaps between the two branches of research.

Kevin Heng had found that the mathematical equations describing the chemical processes in the atmosphere of exoplanets are similar to those used to describe the transmission of infectious diseases. Heng explains: “In astrophysics, for example, simulation models are used to investigate how molecules on distant planets react with each other and form compounds.” Althaus adds: “We use a very similar methodology based on the same mathematical principles in epidemiology to investigate how infectious diseases are transmitted.”

The two research areas are similar in other respects as well. Heng: “In astronomy, we look at large collections, so-called populations, of objects in the sky. They can be populations of galaxies, stars or planets.” Statements about these populations are then made at a statistical level. And in epidemiology too, data is considered at population level, and evaluated statistically. “So you could say that we use the same tools of statistical analysis and modeling to understand both celestial objects and human health,” they both say.

Answers to the pressing issues of the future

In both astrophysics and epidemiology, researchers have to deal with an enormous amount of data. The collaboration between the CSH and the ISPM has now been institutionalized and the INPUT platform founded to bundle expertise in this field and to use synergies. INPUT stands for “Interfaculty Platform for Data and Computational Science”. The platform is managed by Christian Althaus. 

Kevin Heng says: “The spirit of the INPUT platform is to look for different fields of research which at first glance do not appear to have much in common, but which show a close similarity in the application of modelling and statistics.” For example, David Ginsbourger from the Institute for Mathematical Statistics and Actuarial Science is already on board with other researchers to follow.

In 2020 the University of Bern was able to make an important contribution to understanding the pandemic. “And now I hope that with INPUT we will be able to work on other topics beyond infectious diseases that are of great importance today on a global level, such as “planetary health”, i.e. the state of health of human civilization and its environment in terms of global coexistence, ecology and climate,” Althaus continues. This requires a comprehensive understanding of a large amount of data or computer simulations that are used to model complex systems. “We want to gain an understanding of the pressing issues of the future so that the right answers can be found,” Althaus concludes.