ITR: Special Focus on Computer Science and Epidemiology

Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick NJ

Investigators

Abstract

EIA-0205116 Fred Roberts Rutgers University ITR: Special Focus on Computer Science and Epidemiology Mathematical methods have become important tools in analyzing the spread and control of infectious and also noninfectious diseases. The size of modern epidemiological problems and the large data sets that arise call out for the use of powerful computational tools in conjunction with the mathematical analysis. This project believes that partnerships between computer scientists and epidemiologists can make important new contributions to the usefulness of these mathematical methods. Research efforts in the project will be carried out by interdisciplinary, international working groups which will investigate issues in computer science and related mathematics that need to be resolved to make progress on important problems in epidemiology and will explore and apply methods of computer science and related mathematics not widely used in epidemiology. Topics to be studied by these groups include: Adverse Event/Disease Reporting, Surveillance, and Analysis; Data Mining and Epidemiology; Analogies Between Computer Viruses and Immune Systems and Biological Viruses and Immune Systems; Distributed Computing, Social Networks, and Disease Spread Processes; Phylogenetic Trees and Rapidly Evolving Diseases, Spatio-Temporal and Network Modeling of Diseases; and Methodologies for Comparing Vaccination Strategies. Other important goals will be to involve more computer scientists in epidemiological research; develop and strengthen collaborations and partnerships between mathematical scientists and biological scientists; introduce young investigators from both the computer science and biological science communities to the issues, problems and challenges of epidemiology; and involve biological and computer scientists together to define the agenda and develop the tools of computational epidemiology.