COVID-19 International Research Team

What COVID-19 International Research Team does

COVID-19 International Research Team (COV-IRT) is a nonprofit research consortium founded in 2020 and domiciled in Washington, USA, operating under a large consortium open science model. It was established by Dr. Afshin Beheshti (President, Bioinformatician and Principal Investigator at KBR/NASA Ames Research Center), Dr. Todd Treangen (Rice University computer scientist), and Dr. Krista Ternus to accelerate understanding of SARS-CoV-2, identify therapeutic targets, and develop treatments for COVID-19 and Long COVID. The consortium brings together approximately 7 core staff with a network of about 30 scientists and over 600 contributing authors across publications, spanning directors from academic institutions and hospitals, senior and junior faculty, industry leaders, graduate students, and postdocs. Its research has been published in high-impact peer-reviewed journals including Science Translational Medicine, Science Advances, Nature, Cell, Nature Communications, Cell Reports, Microbiology Spectrum, and the European Journal of Human Genetics.

COV-IRT's product surface consists of four free, publicly distributed tools: MaskCheck, a face mask compliance application for iOS and Android using RealNetworks' SAFR computer vision; the COVID-19 Exposure Assessment Tool (CEAT), an interactive aerosol-based exposure risk calculator published in Science Advances; SeqScreen, an open source bioinformatics workflow for DNA sequence characterization available on GitLab; and the Primer Monitor Tool for tracking SARS-CoV-2 primer set variants against GISAID sequences. The organization earns no commercial product revenue; instead, its operations are funded through donations and research grants (including the COVID-19 HPC Consortium supercomputing allocation and C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute funds), with member institutions providing in-kind support. Go-to-market is community-led: the consortium recruits members via direct outreach and accepts clinical laboratory partners contributing samples and metadata, while outputs are distributed through the website, OSF platform, virtual symposia, peer-reviewed publications, social media, and direct app store channels.

Name

COVID-19 International Research Team

Legal name

COVID-19 International Research Team

Website

https://cov-irt.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2020

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

COVID-19 International Research Team (COV-IRT) is a nonprofit research consortium founded in 2020 that runs a global open-science model for COVID-19 and Long COVID research, serving scientists, public health officials, and the public through free tools (MaskCheck, CEAT, SeqScreen) and peer-reviewed publications.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Research Funding and Donations: COV-IRT operates as a research consortium funded through donations and research grants. The organization accepts monetary donations for laboratory sample preparation and sequencing of clinical samples, with programs and organizations recommended by COV-IRT members accepting donations for this purpose.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels7 records

Core offering

COV-IRT is a nonprofit open science research consortium that coordinates global scientists to study SARS-CoV-2, identify therapeutic targets, and develop COVID-19 and Long COVID treatments. It delivers this through collaborative research publications and four free public-facing tools: the MaskCheck face mask compliance app, the COVID-19 Exposure Assessment Tool (CEAT), the SeqScreen bioinformatics workflow, and the Primer Monitor Tool.

Product overview

COV-IRT operates as a large consortium open science model focused on COVID-19 research rather than a traditional software company. The organization provides four distinct tools: MaskCheck, a free AI-powered face mask compliance app for iOS/Android with public health data dashboards; CEAT, an interactive COVID-19 Exposure Assessment Tool for estimating group exposure risk; SeqScreen, an open-source bioinformatics workflow for DNA sequence characterization; and the Primer Monitor Tool for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 primer set variants. COV-IRT also publishes collaborative research including comprehensive SARS-CoV-2 reviews and papers on mitochondrial impacts of COVID-19.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• MaskCheck: Face mask compliance app powered by SAFR from RealNetworks, using AI to assess face mask compliance in public spaces.
• COVID-19 Exposure Assessment Tool (CEAT)
• SeqScreen
• Primer Monitor Tool

Products and services

• MaskCheck A free face mask compliance application that uses AI computer vision to detect whether individuals are wearing masks properly. Available for iOS and Android, it includes a public health data repository service and live mask compliance dashboards. Targets schools, businesses, and public venues worldwide.
• COVID-19 Exposure Assessment Tool (CEAT) An interactive PDF tool that estimates group-wide relative exposure to SARS-CoV-2 based on aerosol models incorporating ventilation, infection prevalence, group characteristics, and behavior factors. Benchmark results against US OSHA exposure risk classifications. For public health officials, policymakers, employers, and event organizers.
• SeqScreen An open source bioinformatics workflow for detecting and characterizing DNA sequences of interest. Useful for annotating full-length gene sequences in assembled genomes and gaining information from short gene fragments in metagenomes, metatranscriptomes, or individual sequences (>50 bp). Executes initialization, SeqMapper alignment, taxonomic identification, functional annotation, and BPoI report generation. For bioinformaticians and genomics researchers.
• Primer Monitor Tool A web tool that continually monitors registered primer sets for overlapping variants in SARS-CoV-2 sequences from GISAID. Logged-in users can propose new primer sets and subscribe to notifications when overlapping variants appear. For diagnostic assay developers and SARS-CoV-2 researchers.

Quantifiable outcome

• Published comprehensive SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 review Part 1 and Part 2 in Nature
• +4 more outcomes

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability6 records

Feature4 records

Partnerships

Three partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• RealNetworkscoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 December 2020COV-IRT collaborated with RealNetworks to launch MaskCheck, a free face mask compliance app powered by SAFR technology from RealNetworks. The partnership combined COV-IRT's public health research expertise with RealNetworks' AI and app development capabilities to create a tool helping increase compliance with COVID-19 safety regulations worldwide.
• Signature Science LLCcoreTechnology or IntegrationCOV-IRT member Signature Science LLC developed and released updates to the SARS-CoV-2 Exposure Assessment Tool (CEAT). The tool allows users to estimate group-wide relative exposure to SARS-CoV-2 and incorporates scientific principles and recent findings regarding virus characteristics.
• Industry/Academic Collaboration for SeqScreencoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerAn industry/academic collaboration led by COV-IRT co-founders Krista Ternus and Todd Treangen released SeqScreen, an open source bioinformatics workflow for detecting and characterizing DNA sequences of interest. The workflow leverages multiple open source tools.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights3 records

Broad incumbents

• Allen Institute: Large, well-funded nonprofit biomedical research organization producing high-impact open datasets and tools. Broader incumbent with similar open-science ethos, publication credibility, and tool-release culture, but operating at much larger scale and across multiple disease areas.
• Chan Zuckerberg Biohub: Nonprofit research organization funded by philanthropy that supports collaborative, open-science biomedical research across institutions. Comparable in its consortium-style open-science model and philanthropic funding structure, but with substantially larger resources and broader disease scope.
• Howard Hughes Medical Institute: Large nonprofit biomedical research organization supporting Investigator-led science with high publication impact. Comparable as a large, well-established nonprofit research organization, though with far greater resources and a broader scientific mandate than COV-IRT's COVID-specific focus.

Direct peers

• Critical Path Institute: Nonprofit consortium that brings together industry, academia, and regulators to accelerate drug development through shared data and tools. Comparable to COV-IRT in operating as a multi-stakeholder nonprofit consortium focused on shared research infrastructure and tools.
• Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi): Nonprofit product development partnership that uses a collaborative R&D model to develop treatments for neglected diseases. Highly comparable as a nonprofit, donor-funded research consortium focused on therapeutic development through multi-stakeholder collaboration.
• National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C): NIH-supported collaborative that aggregates EHR data from millions of COVID-19 patients for research. Direct peer operating as a multi-institutional data-and-research consortium focused on COVID-19, comparable to COV-IRT's open-science analytical model.
• RECOVER Initiative (NIH): NIH-funded national research consortium studying Long COVID. Direct peer in the Long COVID space COV-IRT is pivoting into; both rely on consortium-driven clinical research and large-scale data aggregation across multiple institutions.
• COVID Moonshot: Open-science, crowdsourced COVID-19 antiviral discovery consortium involving academic and industry scientists. Highly comparable to COV-IRT's large-consortium open-science model, therapeutic-target focus, and reliance on volunteer scientific collaboration rather than a centralized institution.

Emerging players

• Innovative Genomics Institute: Nonprofit research collaboration between UC Berkeley and UCSF focused on CRISPR and genomic medicine. Comparable as an academic-led, nonprofit open-science research consortium producing publicly available tools and datasets, though focused on genomics rather than infectious disease.

Regional players

• European COVID-19 Data Platform: EMBL-led European open data platform for SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences and COVID-19 research data. Comparable as a regional open-science data and tool infrastructure provider for COVID-19 research, complementing COV-IRT's tools like Primer Monitor and SeqScreen.

Market position

Strengths3 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/covirt19
• Facebookfacebook.com/covirt19
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/covid-19-international-research-team

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles3 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about COVID-19 International Research Team