Actually, Nigel Goldenfeld and Sergei Maslov, two University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign physics researchers, thought they had it figured out. From Aug. 16, when campus reopened, to Sept. 13, more than 1,800 new cases of COVID-19 were detected, according to the university’s COVID-19 dashboard. One thousand cases occurred in the first two weeks of the fall semester.