Weitz Group

Investigating how viruses transform human health and the fate of our planet

Investigating how viruses transform human health and the fate of our planet.      

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Researchers to Lead Paradigm Shift in Pandemic Prevention with NSF Grant

September 29, 2022 by adavidson38 Leave a Comment

This story was written by Bryant Wine, and was originally published by the School of Computational Science and Engineering.

One lesson learned from the Covid-19 pandemic is that human behavior is a difficult variable to consider when predicting and preventing disease outbreaks. This challenge is magnified even more considering how different scientific fields conduct, interpret, and present research.

To overcome these challenges, Georgia Tech researchers form the core of an interdisciplinary, interorganizational team which seeks to prevent disease outbreaks by integrating the study of human behavior with computational data-driven models.

Calling themselves BEHIVE (BEHavioral Interaction and Viral Evolution), the group recently received a $1 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant toward multidisciplinary team formation and novel outbreak prevention research.

“Our goal is to bring together all these terrific researchers from different disciplines to help bring a paradigm shift in the science of pandemic prediction and prevention,” said B. Aditya Prakash, associate professor with Georgia Tech’s School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE).

“While epidemic forecasting is compared to weather forecasting, there is an important difference. Unlike weather, our actions and behavior can change the course of an epidemic.”

Prakash is the principal investigator of the $1 million NSF grant. Fellow BEHIVE members include:

  • Pinar Keskinocak, William W. George Chair and Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech
  • Thomas Kingsley, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics at Mayo Clinic
  • Shinobu Kitayama, Robert B. Zajonc Collegiate Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan
  • Ramesh Raskar, Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab
  • Liliana Salvador, Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia’s Department of Infectious Diseases
  • Joshua Weitz, Professor and Tom and Marie Patton Chair in the School of Biological Sciences and Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences (QBioS) at Georgia Tech

 

Prakash emphasized BEHIVE’s primary goal to use its interdisciplinary organization to bridge research methodologies between hard and soft sciences.

He explained that human behavior was underutilized in epidemic science before Covid-19, largely due to data scarcity and underdeveloped computational technologies. Behavioral dynamics encountered during the pandemic, such as social distancing, mask wearing, and vaccine hesitancy, has provided new research and data that now can be considered in models and simulations.

Here, BEHIVE will develop high fidelity computational models by designing new artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques that bridge human behavior knowledge and traditional epidemiological theory and models.

“It is still an open question of how we can best incorporate human behavior knowledge into the study of pandemics. That is the challenge,” Prakash said. “Our main idea is to better integrate knowledge from psychology and the humanities into pandemic science using novel computational methods.”

BEHIVE originated when team members met through various workshops held in 2020 and 2021. Prakash was an invited organizer of the National Symposium on Predicting Emergence of Virulent Entities by Novel Technologies (PREVENT).

PREVENT reported that interdisciplinary collaboration was an obstacle in predicting and preventing pandemics. For example, some vocabularies often don’t mean the same thing across disciplines, so a consistent methodology to establish a common language must be developed.

BEHIVE is custom built to solve these challenges PREVENT revealed. Along with a wealth of knowledge learned through past epidemics, each BEHIVE researcher brings to the group experience working across interdisciplinary lines.

Among the Georgia Tech researchers alone, Keskinocak interfaced with policymakers and the public on measures to slow Covid-19 spread.

Prakash’s lab led several high-profile Covid-19 forecasting initiatives, including collaboration with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Weitz teamed with fellow Georgia Tech researchers with the College of Science, College of Computing, and the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering to create a predoctoral training program that integrates computational modeling and data analytics into bioscience.

Keskinocak, Prakash, and Weitz together are also faculty in the Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS), one of Georgia Tech’s ten interdisciplinary research institutes. IDEaS connects research centers and efforts in foundational areas such as machine learning, high-performance computing, and algorithms.

BEHIVE’s $1 million grant is funded through NSF’s Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention (PIPP) initiative. This program supports high-risk, high-payoff convergent research that aims to identify, model, predict, track, and mitigate the effects of future pandemics.

According to Prakash, the PREVENT symposium’s summary report helped lay the foundation for the PIPP program.

PIPP is a two-phased initiative in which NSF selects to fund 25 to 30 project teams, including BEHIVE, for eighteen months through phase one. However, this does not necessarily limit PIPP’s influence to chosen project teams within academia.

BEHIVE intends to partner with industry, governmental, and non-profit organizations to expand its interdisciplinary, interorganizational network.

BEHIVE’s nucleus of Georgia Tech researchers connects the group with the CDC, Georgia Department of Public Health, and numerous hospitals across the state. BEHIVE’s other researchers also serve in leading roles at non-profits, such as the Pathcheck Foundation, and top hospitals like the Mayo Clinic.

Along with developing interdisciplinary methodologies, new disease prevention models, and partnering with external organizations, BEHIVE hopes to develop educational training programs. This would ensure their effort last generations to bring about the necessary paradigm change to prevent future pandemics.

“Our initial projects and research the next eighteen months will help us get a sense of research gaps and enlarge our perspective” Prakash said. “We’re approaching PIPP as a science, and we want to lay the foundation of the science by bringing in many people from different fields for the future.”

Image credit: Georgia Institute of Technology

Filed Under: Press Tagged With: Infectious disease dynamics

Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool featured in the Wall Street Journal

December 20, 2021 by adavidson38 Leave a Comment

As the holiday season approaches, many are looking for ways to make sure their holiday celebrations are safe. Recently featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool is one of the many tools available to help you and your family make informed decisions this holiday season.

Follow the tool at @covid19riskUSA on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to stay up to date on additional media features, risk updates, and news.

More about the tool

Since its inception in July of 2020, over 8 million people have used the Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool to gauge Covid-19 exposure risk. Created by members of the Weitz Group, (Prof. Weitz, Dr. Stephen Beckett, and Quan Nguyen) in collaboration with the Applied Bioinformatics Laboratory and Clio Andris, a professor of city and regional planning and interactive computing at Georgia Tech, this tool uses real-time Covid-19 case data to calculate the county-level risk of exposure to Covid-19 at events of different sizes. For example, the tool can estimate how likely it is that at least one person has Covid-19 at a 15-person Thanksgiving celebration.

As the tool has grown its development has continued. A new collaboration with cognitive neuroscientists at Duke University has led to the addition of interactive elements to the site. Users can now see examples of events of different sizes, such as noting that a 50-person event is similar to what one would encounter at a restaurant or a grocery store. People are also encouraged to test their knowledge of the risk levels in their area with a risk quiz.

To learn more about the science behind the tool, read our paper in Nature Human Behavior. Visit our Covid-19 Research page to learn more about our other research on Covid-19.

I’m worried about the risk in my area – what can I do?

If the risk levels in your area have you worried about seeing family over the holiday season, there are things you can do to reduce the chance of spreading Covid-19.

Get vaccinated. If you or your loved ones haven’t already, getting the Covid-19 vaccine will vastly reduce your chance of infection, the severity of breakthrough infections, and the risk of spreading infection.
Get tested. Even if you don’t have symptoms, some cases of Covid-19 are asymptomatic. Getting tested for Covid-19 will help ensure that you are not unknowingly exposing loved ones to the virus.
Wear a mask. Wearing a mask when possible will reduce the risk of spread.
Improve ventilation. Hosting celebrations outdoors when possible dramatically decreases the chance of spread. If that is not feasible, increasing ventilation in indoor areas by opening windows or using air purifiers can help.
Reduce the size of your gathering. With fewer people, the chances that at least one person has Covid-19 are reduced.
Keep your distance. Social distancing when possible is a great preventative step.

Filed Under: Press Tagged With: Covid-19, Infectious disease dynamics

Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool makes headlines as Thanksgiving approaches

November 23, 2021 by adavidson38 Leave a Comment

Last November the Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool made headlines as people around the United States planned their holiday travel amidst rising Covid-19 cases and uncertainty. Now, the tool is in the news again.

So far, the tool has been featured in national news outlets such as National Geographic, The Hill, and Fast Company, as well as in a number of regional news outlets, including:

  • CBS-17 in Raleigh, NC
  • The Courier Journal in Louisville, KY
  • The Tri-City Herald in Kennewick, WA
  • The Akron Beacon Journal in Akron, OH
  • The Des Moines Register in Des Moines, IA
  • The Springfield News-Leader in Springfield, MO
  • The Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, NJ
  • Mass Live in Springfield, MA

 

Follow the tool at @covid19riskUSA to stay up to date on additional media features, risk updates, and news.

     

More about the tool

Since its inception in July of 2020, over 8 million people have used the Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool to gauge Covid-19 exposure risk. Created by members of the Weitz Group, (Prof. Weitz, Dr. Stephen Beckett, and Quan Nguyen) in collaboration with the Applied Bioinformatics Laboratory and Clio Andris, a professor of city and regional planning and interactive computing at Georgia Tech, this tool uses real-time Covid-19 case data to calculate the county-level risk of exposure to Covid-19 at events of different sizes. For example, the tool can estimate how likely it is that at least one person has Covid-19 at a 15-person Thanksgiving celebration.

As the tool has grown its development has continued. A new collaboration with cognitive neuroscientists at Duke University has led to the addition of interactive elements to the site. Users can now see examples of events of different sizes, such as noting that a 50-person event is similar to what one would encounter at a restaurant or a grocery store. People are also encouraged to test their knowledge of the risk levels in their area with a risk quiz.

To learn more about the science behind the tool, read our paper in Nature Human Behavior. Visit our Covid-19 Research page to learn more about our other research on Covid-19.

I’m worried about the risk in my area – what can I do?

If the risk levels in your area have you worried about seeing family over the holiday season, there are things you can do to reduce the chance of spreading Covid-19.

Get vaccinated. If you or your loved ones haven’t already, getting the Covid-19 vaccine will vastly reduce your chance of infection, the severity of breakthrough infections, and the risk of spreading infection.
Improve ventilation. Hosting celebrations outdoors when possible dramatically decreases the chance of spread. If that is not feasible, increasing ventilation in indoor areas by opening windows or using air purifiers can help.
Reduce the size of your gathering. With fewer people, the chances that at least one person has Covid-19 are reduced.
Keep your distance. Social distancing when possible is a great preventative step.
Wear a mask. Wearing a mask when possible will reduce the risk of spread.

Filed Under: Press Tagged With: Covid-19, Infectious disease dynamics

Prof. Weitz Interviewed for Wired Magazine about Predicting the Path of Covid-19

September 17, 2021 by adavidson38 Leave a Comment

Prof. Weitz recently shared his take on predicting the trajectory of the Covid-19 pandemic in an article published in Wired Magazine. Discussing how the perceived risk of infection can impact human behavior, Prof. Weitz explained that this complex relationship makes predicting where the Covid-19 pandemic will head next difficult.

“The prevailing theme that continues to make things hard now is the interplay between disease state, how people react, and how people react over time.” –Joshua S. Weitz

To learn more about our work on this topic, read our paper in PNAS or view our other Covid-19 research.

Filed Under: Press Tagged With: Covid-19, Infectious disease dynamics

New paper on assessing population immunity to Covid-19 published in Annals of Epidemiology

September 9, 2021 by adavidson38 Leave a Comment

In collaboration with Benjamin Lopman‘s group at Emory University, our recent work entitled “A framework for monitoring population immunity to SARS-CoV-2” was published in Annals of Epidemiology. The proposed framework suggests combining records of vaccinations and natural infections to assess immunity to Covid-19 at the population level. A dashboard was also created to track estimates of population immunity at the state level.

Filed Under: Publication Tagged With: Covid-19, Infectious disease dynamics

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The Weitz Group

Investigating how viruses transform human health and the fate of our planet

310 Ferst Dr
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332, USA

Website developed by Audra Davidson for the Weitz Group, 2021. For more information on the group, contact Dr. Gabi Steinbach: gabi.steinbach (@) biosci.gatech.edu

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