Waterloo’s
Department
of
Applied
Mathematics
PhD
candidate
James
Petrie is
among
a
group
of
volunteers
who
have
combined
their
knowledge
to
develop
Covid
Watch,
an
app
that
uses
Bluetooth
to
detect
when
users
are
in
proximity
to
each
other
and
alerts
them
anonymously
if
they
were
in
contact
with
someone
later
confirmed
to
have
COVID-19.
The
app
uses
privacy-preserving
measures
so
that
no
one,
including
the
government,
can
track
down
who
exposed
whom.
Petrie got involved in an online effective altruism community just before the COVID-19 pandemic. He was actively looking at what he could do that would be beneficial to the world.
“When I first saw the news in mid-January about COVID-19, I started thinking how the stuff I’m good at could be used to help solve this sort of problem,” Petrie says. “I started thinking of ways to make the contact tracing system more effective.
Learn more about the Covid Watch project.