An academic army has assembled in the Bay Area over the past several weeks, shifting research efforts to combat the coronavirus and its far-reaching impact.

The endeavor, composed of thousands of scientists, researchers and scholars, is a historic and virtually unheard of effort, with some of the biggest brains in the world dropping whatever they were working on to focus their expertise on the disease.

The Bay Area, home to one of the highest concentrations of Nobel laureates and advanced degrees, has become a hub of coronavirus activity. The efforts so far include a technique to make medical masks modeled after cotton-candy machines, an algorithm to search billions of tweets for signs of community clusters of coronavirus-fueled depression and an early-detection system to locate COVID-19 conspiracies and misinformation on social media.

As engineers and scientists, we take the oath, said Manu Prakash, a bioengineering professor at Stanford University, who worked on the cotton-candy medical mask concept. When there is a challenge, if were not going to rise to the occasion, who else is going to solve these problems?

The crisis has created an environment of cooperation and communal sharing of discoveries and ideas, which is very rare in the scientific community. Scientists and researchers, often at competitive odds, typically guard their studies and discoveries from their peers until they can claim credit.

Research and discovery, which can take years to fund and execute under normal circumstances, is taking weeks, with international cooperation fueling progress and funders fast-tracking grants.

The global crisis has spurred an unprecedented call to action in academia, experts say.

A lot of the finest minds of the world have turned to COVID-19, said Hany Farid, UC Berkeley computer science professor.

Their efforts are already paying off.

Prakash had just returned to Stanford University in early March from a scuba diving trip in France where the coronavirus was already hitting hard and immediately went into quarantine in his room.

The bioengineer had seen the fallout of the disease in Europe and anticipated impending doom in the U.S., with shortages of protective medical gear. Confined with his possessions, he stared at the full-face snorkel mask that he hadnt stored away after the trip.

What if, he thought, it could be converted into a reusable medical mask? As he waited for any symptoms to show up, he got to work, designing a way to attach viral filters. It worked, tested to function at the highest standards. The goal now is to work with a coalition of partners to produce 50,000 reusable Pneumasks for distribution around the world, with a $20 to $30 cost to produce each one.

His Stanford lab focuses on frugal science, or research focused on ways for even the poorest communities to access health care and other resources, including a 50-cent, paper microscope.

The coronavirus has created an urgency to this work, he said, an exclamation point on the expression, Necessity is the mother of invention.

All my students are working on these projects, he said. Theyve dropped everything to engage.

Farid also shifted his research to the coronavirus. Hes been studying the spread of misinformation and conspiracies on social media for years.

The coronavirus has made past conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns look small by comparison. This is global, people are scared, and they are on social media, he said.

The perfect sstorm, he said.

This is why we have people drinking bleach thinking theyre going to be cured, Farid said, referring to social media posts recommending the dangerous idea. We need to undo the stupidity thats out there.

Farid developed a large survey last week, asking 500 people to read 40 coronavirus-related headlines, 20 not true, 20 true, asking if they had seen them, believed them, or knew someone who would believe them.

Preliminary results shows 15% of those surveyed said they know someone who would believe that gargling bleach to prevent or cure coronavirus was legitimate.

Thats shocking, he said. Now the question is whats next.

Farid is developing early detection systems to identify these types of conspiracies or misinformation campaigns online and flag it for social media companies.

We have to be able to disrupt these campaigns at the beginning, he said.

Coronavirus has been a call to arms, said Julia Schaletzky, executive director of the UC Berkeley Center for Emerging and Neglected Diseases.

Everybody has eyes on goal, she said. Its kind of amazing to see that.

Schaletzky used her fundraising skills to create a $1 million COVID catalyst fund to seed research without the usual long application and review process. The first batch of cash went out Thursday, funding researchers working on an at-home coronavirus diagnostic based on an agricultural testing tool.

I havent had a weekend since we started and the same is true for most of my colleagues, she said. Everybody is trying, and there is a true commitment to do something about this disease.

Johannes Eichstaedt, a Stanford assistant professor in psychology, is also looking to mitigate the effects of the virus, tracking the digital traces of depression, despair and other psychological impacts of the coronavirus.

The idea is to detect hot spots of mental health crisis in communities or counties, to create some visibility into these psychological shifts, he said. The general assumption is that you can only improve what you can measure.

His algorithm is sweeping billions of tweets.

The algorithm is currently analyzing the prevalence of 10,000 words, phrases and emojis, words like alone, expressions of hostility, cursing, anger, complaining about headaches or their bodies.

The results could help push for federal or local emergency funding to direct more therapists or mental health resources into communities, Eichstaedt said.

Lots of people are going to struggle a lot, he said. Im not sure we are helping them.

Experts around the world, say the current crisis is a novel moment in human history, a global laboratory ripe for research and solutions to a host of problems related to the virus.

This is the bread and butter of the life of a researcher, Farid said. This is what we do every day, except now were just doing it in a crisis-mode situation.

An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the type of mask converted for medical purposes.

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker

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'The finest minds in the world': Bay Area researchers race to fight coronavirus with innovation and creativity - San Francisco Chronicle