How Argonne Went Viral

THIS IS A TSUNAMI THAT’S MOVING RIGHT TOWARD US.” THAT WAS THE DISQUIETING thought Stephen Streiffer, Argonne National Laboratory’s interim deputy lab director for science, had on January 10. That day, Chinese scientists first released the gene sequence of SARS-CoV-2, allowing researchers around the globe to begin study of the novel coronavirus. The very next day, China reported the first known death from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus.

As the coronavirus began spreading throughout the world, infecting hundreds of thousands, Argonne’s top minds, along with associates from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, joined forces on the front lines of the international scientific fight against the pandemic. At Argonne, a U.S. Department of Energy research center in Lemont, several teams of researchers — microbiologists, systems engineers, computer scientists, emergency management experts — have been feverishly working to provide answers to the most critical questions raised by the contagion, from how to create effective antiviral medications to which societal interventions