Rachael Suétt, a recent graduate of the University of Glasgow/The Glasgow School of Art Masters in Medical Visualisation and Human Anatomy, has released the app ‘Visible Viruses’ to help people understand the viruses that surround us all. “Proper comprehension of the 3D nature of viruses and the misconceptions surrounding them are important,” points out Rachael. These issues, she realised, were “not sufficiently addressed in current virus education,” and so she set out to target her app particularly at secondary school students.

She therefore designed a multimedia educational tool, which combines posters and an app to explore key features of three viruses. The posters can be used on their own, but as Rachael explains they also use augmented reality to trigger animated content in the app “so that they provide the user with a whole new perspective on viruses.” Together, the resources link detailed 3D animations, wide-ranging text and quizzes to provide up-to-date information about what viruses are and what they do.

Ed Hutchinson, who co-supervised the project, says “it’s fantastic the way Rachael has packed a huge amount of information about viruses into such an accessible resource. This includes recent cutting-edge research from the CVR on the structure of herpes viruses, 3D models of influenza viruses built in a previous collaboration with the Glasgow School of Art, and a chance to look up close at the changing surface of the Zika virus, a research focus for many groups here.”

Since first release, the app has been completely rebuilt, with improved interaction and accessibility options – and with much richer information available, including an entirely new section on SARS-CoV-2. Rachael’s development of the new version has been supported by the MRC, and in collaboration with Dr Daniel Livingstone at The Glasgow School of Art. The app also integrates work by Annabel Slater, another graduate of the Masters in Medical Visualisation and Human Anatomy. Annabel created the 3D models of SARS-CoV-2 used in the app, which also now feature in the Journal of General Virology.

While we work on finalising the publication of the new and updated app to the Apple and Android app stores, you can still download the original version for Android. The original Viruses app and posters can be downloaded for free below, and we hope they are flexible enough to let you explore viruses at home, in the classroom, or anywhere you can set up a poster and point your phone at it. We’d love to know what you think of them - tweet us @CVRinfo using the hashtag #CVRvisibleviruses!

These educational materials are freely available under a creative commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0). This beta app should run on any Android phone or tablet with OS 5.0 (Lollipop) or later, though you may need to adjust your settings to allow content from unknown sources (this can be reverted after installing the app if you wish). This app is being developed as part of a student project and is still undergoing testing; it should run without issue on suitable devices but it is supplied as is and we cannot be held liable for any issues arising from its use. For details of how to download the app, please see the document titled ‘ReadMe’ which you can find by following the ‘Download here’ button.

We expect this app to be released to the Apple Store and Google Play very soon.