Today on 1050 Bascom, we are excited to welcome back Laura Albert, professor of industrial and systems engineering at UW-Madison. Prof. Albert first joined us last summer to talk about Covid-19 testing and tracing and the return of major league baseball. Ten months later, COVID remains a global and national crisis -- though we now have effective vaccines and, in the US, case numbers are declining in seemingly hopeful ways again. We wanted to check-in with Prof. Albert for her insights on what we’ve learned about the virus, what the early models got right and wrong, and the impact of vaccines in the US and around the world. Prof. Albert also offered her take on what a return to something akin “normal” might look like and when we might see it happen. We enjoyed our conversation with Prof. Albert and hope you will too.