hyderabad a research proposal from an nit warangal academic to study effect of temperature and humidity on the crippling coronavirus sarscov2 has made it to a publicprivate effort led by the white house office of science and technology policy ostp to understand the virus and help develop vaccinesthe proposal by soumya rath assistant professor department of biotechnology nit warangal is among 27 active projects from across the world and the only one from india that has been included in the covid19 high performance computing consortium apart from the white house ostp the consortium includes the us department of energy and tech behemoth ibmsoumya raths proposal dependence of structure and dynamics of novel sarscov2 on temperature and humidity in the atmosphere aims to find out if the virus undergoes any biophysical changes with changes in atmospheric conditions he submitted his proposal on april 15 i have been given computational time by the consortium during which i will be running simulations this study would open a new dimension in the characterisation of sarscov2 and future corona family class of viruses in prevention categorisation and drug designing aspects the nit researcher saidin the past too the coronavirus family of viruses such as sars and mers has infected individuals however they gradually disappeared in the hot and humid conditions data obtained from countries with higher temperature and humidity also indicate a low propensity of infection in this work we will study the impact of atmospheric conditions mainly the temperature and humidity and try to unravel if the virus undergoes any biophysical changes with change in atmospheric conditions he saidthe initiative brings together the government industry and academia