Ben Wissel is an MSTP student in the Biomedical Informatics (BMI) Graduate Program, and his PI is Judith Dexheimer, PhD. Ben is an active student leader within the MSTP, and during the 2019-2020 academic year, he served as the Chief Officer of the MSTP Student Governing Council.

In early 2020, Ben and another BMI graduate student, PJ Van Camp, MD, created an interactive dashboard mapping COVID-19 data from local to national levels. The dashboard tracks cases, deaths, testing volumes and rankings to help people be aware of outbreaks in their area. As the pandemic evolves, Ben and PJ plan to continue to add new features and metrics.

The dashboard was released to the public in April 2020 and published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA). By the end of April, the tool had already reached thousands of users in almost every U.S. state and in 18 countries.

Ben on the development of the COVID-19 dashboard:
“We started the project out of frustration for not being able to see the data as we wanted it, and it turned out many people were feeling the same way."

Learn more.

Explore the COVID-19 Watcher!

Watch Ben's interview with the local news!