This award will fund the Pandemic Readiness for Emerging Pathogens (PREP) workshop, planned for February 15-19, 2021. The PREP workshop will foster scientific discussion and catalyze innovation and partnerships to enhance our understanding of the challenges and potential solutions to rapid detection and assessment of emerging pathogens and infectious disease dynamics from the molecular to the ecological scale. Four panel topics are planned for this workshop: (1) The Challenges in Rapid and Accurate Detection and Assessment of Emerging Pathogens; (2) Approaches to Rapid and Accurate Detection and Assessment of Emerging Pathogens; (3) Monitoring Animal and Human Movements, High-Risk Interfaces for Disease Transmission, and At-risk Communities; (4) Data-Intensive Machine Learning and Modelling for Pandemic Preparedness. By integrating expertise in new sensor engineering, epidemiology, wildlife, and human health, ecology, quantitative social sciences, evolutionary biology, engineering, and computer science, new approaches in modeling, computational mathematics, data-enabled predictive science and decision making, and real-time intelligent sensing will be identified to transform infectious disease outbreak prediction capabilities. Subsequent to the workshop, the organizers plan to prepare reports summarizing the workshop for publication in high-profile general science outlets which can be used to inform the development of predictive intelligence for pandemic prevention.
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.
