Yeming Shen — a 28-year-old who was studying Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York — passed away from influenza on Feb. 10, theRensselaer County Health Departmentsaid in a statement.
Investigators spent 45 minutes looking for Shen before the search was called off,according to theAssociated Press.
Dispatchers were not able to precisely locate Shen’s location because emergency dispatch systems still have trouble fixing onto the exact position from which cellphone users make calls,according toTimes Union. While landlines usually allow dispatchers to see who is calling through their address, cellphone calls are harder to trace and data from cell towers often cannot reveal a caller’s exact location.
The local newspaper reported that Shen’s call was hard to decipher and line went dead before dispatchers could learn the caller’s identity.
“What happened this year was flu came in quite early and when it comes in early it does sometimes divide and mutate and so we have a couple strains circulating right now,” she said.
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The Center of Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there have been14,000 to 36,000 flu-related deathsfrom Oct. 1, 2019 to Feb. 8, 2020.
Shen was described as a hard-working PhD student who had “tremendous impact” on Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in a letter written to the school paper,The Polytechnic, on Wednesday.
“He used his tremendous mathematical mind to help create new methods to disrupt the networks of transnational criminal organizations, a truly noble cause,” associate professor Thomas Sharkey wrote of Shen. “In addition, his methodological innovations have laid the groundwork to potentially help disrupt networks that are traffickinghumans. Simply put, I believe that the legacy of his research is that it will make the world a better place.”
Shen was a co-author on a paper titled “Integrative analytics for detecting and disrupting transnational interdependent criminal smuggling, money, and money-laundering networks” and a lead author on the paper “Interdicting interdependent contraband smuggling, money and money laundering networks with inaccurate information.”
“He was closing in on finishing a third paper but his meticulous and independent nature had him continually refining his methods to improve their performance–which is exactly what you would want from a PhD student,” Shakey continued. “We are fortunate to have had him as a member of our department and university.”
source: people.com
