Carnegie Mellon University
April 17, 2020

CMU Professor Creates Innovative App to Anonymously Trace Exposure to COVID-19

By Emily Payne

Jocelyn Duffy
  • Associate Dean for Communications, MCS

As the world continues to focus on slowing the spread of COVID-19 and determining how to safely restart the world economy, a team of designers, mathematicians, computer scientists and physicists led by Carnegie Mellon University Professor Po-Shen Loh, has developed an innovative new contact tracing app that uses ultrasound technology to more accurately follow people’s exposure to COVID-19 than other apps that use Bluetooth alone. 

The free Android app, NOVID, is currently in public beta testing and Loh is awaiting its approval in the Google Play Store, and an iOS version is under development.

“I had an idea of how to help the world return to normalcy,” said Loh, a member of the Department of Mathematical Sciences faculty in CMU’s Mellon College of Science. “And the Carnegie Mellon and broader Pittsburgh community had everything I needed to start making that idea into reality.”

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