PIPP Phase II: Center for Pandemic Insights (CPI)

University Of California-Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

The Center for Insights into the Pre-emergence Phase of Pandemics (CI3P) will pioneer transdisciplinary initiatives to fundamentally advance the ability to investigate and understand the pre-emergence phase of pandemics. The scale and impact of epidemics and pandemics are expected to increase substantially in future years given global trends in environmental change. Viruses that pose pandemic risk often circulate silently in wildlife, and the events that precipitate outbreaks and spillover pose formidable challenges for early detection. Innovative scientific and technological advances are urgently needed to detect the key events in the pre-emergence phase to inform mitigation of zoonotic disease outbreaks and prevent pandemics at their source. Insights into this pre-emergence phase of pandemics hold the greatest promise for reducing the frequency of epidemics and pandemics. By integrating cutting-edge technology with transdisciplinary research, CI3P will establish sensor systems that detect signals of pathogens circulating in natural reservoirs and changes in health of wildlife, and population and ecosystem measures that can provide insights into how pandemic threats emerge. Scientific and technical innovations achieved by CI3P will have broad applicability beyond animal health, public health, and wildlife conservation. By involving communities in participatory research and engaging the public in One Health solutions, CI3P aims to benefit society by enhancing early detection of pandemic threats, protecting human health, preserving biodiversity, and promoting resilient ecosystems. This Center will catalyze the expertise, creative strategies, and partnerships needed to tackle major challenges in pandemic research, to advance new models for predictive insights into the pre-emergence phase of pandemics. The Center for Insights into the Pre-emergence Phase of Pandemics will facilitate a new paradigm for surveillance of pandemic threats, enabling characterization of key ecological, behavioral and biological events that precede pandemics. This will be achieved through transdisciplinary research and innovative technology needed to 1) inform evolutionary models of virus emergence, characterize community composition and host ecology at high-risk animal-human interfaces, and develop mechanistic models of spillover in complex environments to characterize tipping points in the pre-emergence phase of pandemics, 2) develop multimodal sensor networks for detection of pathogens, disease outbreaks, and key events, that will be deployed alongside participatory community-based research to identify social and practical barriers to large-scale use, and 3) forecast pandemic risk using a suite of machine learning algorithms developed to accommodate rare events and incorporate model-based inferences with real-time data processing for prediction. This Center brings together diverse institutions and partners with the expertise needed to achieve and sustain this bold vision. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.