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New UNT Center to help health officials predict course of infectious outbreaks
DENTON (UNT), Texas -- Public health officials may soon have the tools to accurately predict the dynamics of an infectious disease outbreak thanks to research under way at the University of North Texas. The new Center for Computational Epidemiology, with a $473,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will continue work begun in 2005 by a team from the UNT Department of Geography, Computer Science, and Biology, and the UNT Health Science Center's Department of Biostatistics. "The rapid spread of infectious disease, whether naturally occurring or due to terrorist activities, is a critical national concern," said Dr. Sam Atkinson, professor of environmental science and one of the principal investigators for the project. "We will be developing models that can predict the extent of future disease outbreaks, an essential step for developing pro-active monitoring and control strategies." Once the models are developed and functioning, the Center for Computational Epidemiology will begin training public health officials and UNT students majoring in public health in how to use those models. The center also will provide computational facilities that health officials can use for playing "what if" games. Once trained, public health officials will be able to tap into the system from their own offices and run models to help them plan for the possibility of local infectious disease outbreaks. "Today, we can only collect data after the fact when something such as a pandemic flu outbreak occurs," said Dr. Armin Mikler, associate professor in computer science and engineering at UNT. "That only tells us what already happened. By developing epidemiological models we hope to be able to accurately predict what will happen so that health officials have a plan of action before the first case of an infectious disease is even diagnosed." "Trying to track how a disease spreads is very difficult because people move constantly," explained Dr. Joseph Oppong, professor of geography. "People easily travel from town to town, state to state, and country to country. We hope to develop models that will include geographic, environmental, and demographic information on population groups that will help explain the interaction of populations, which will be a major part of predicting how a disease will spread." The first order of business for the new center is construction of a simulation chamber that will be used to develop models and to train students and public health officials. Because of the computational power needed to run complex models of this type, a computer cluster will be installed at UNT's Discovery Park to run the simulation chamber. In addition, two portable visualization systems that can be used to view the simulation chamber operations will be housed at Discovery Park and at UNT's Health Science Center in Fort Worth. The Center will continue the work of the Computational Epidemiology Research Laboratory begun in 2005 at UNT. The team already has developed working models to estimate the pattern of transmission of diseases such as tuberculosis, human papillomavirus and influenza.
UNT News Service Phone Number: (940) 565-2108
Contact: Buddy Price (940) 565-2943
Email: buddy.price@unt.edu
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