Software Tracking COVID Variants in Real Time is Key to Controlling Outbreaks

Russell Corbett-Detig and his team, recipients of the 2022 UC Santa Cruz Innovation Impact Award Innovator of the Year Award, developed a computational tool known as UShER that enables real-time SARS-CoV-2 tracking and helps researchers identify new lineages of the virus. The easy-to-use tool and online server creates an evolutionary tree that helps scientists understand genomic mutations by creating new branches, showing the relationships between virus samples and the order in which mutations happened along various lineages as the virus evolves.

Team members:

Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Russell Corbett-Detig

Angie Hinrichs - Bioinformatics Programmer, Genome Browser Team, UCSC

Yatish Turakhia - UC San Diego assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and former Genomics Institute postdoctoral scholar

Bryan Thornlow - former UCSC student