A $1 million pilot grant awarded to UT from the National Science Foundation allowed for the creation of the UT Center for Pandemic Decision Science, where researchers will attempt to resolve challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic and prepare for future outbreaks.

The center will expand upon the UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium’s work on analyzing and preventing the spread of COVID-19 by applying their methods to other pathogens. Lauren Ancel Meyers, professor of integrative biology and statistics and data sciences, led the consortium’s efforts to understand COVID-19 for the past two years. Now, Meyers is the director of the new center. 

“When COVID-19 started spreading … we didn’t do a great job of slowing it down and saving lives, particularly in the first year,” Meyers said. “Even though we’ve spent decades planning for the next pandemic … there are so many things we could have done better, which means that we have a lot of work to do to plan for whatever that next pathogen threat is.”

Meyers said the center identified three main efforts, or “thrusts,” for researchers to focus on.

Thrust one involves getting better at identifying the source of viral threats and preventing their spread as soon as possible. 

Thrust two will look into how human behavior during a pandemic can be predicted to create frameworks for future pandemic responses on an individual and community level.

Thrust three focuses on embedding science into every stage of the decision-making process.

“(We) finally have an acknowledgment that science is not in a vacuum, that when we do science, we can do wonderful work and advances, but it doesn’t have an impact unless we take into account with the consumers, the stakeholders,” said Risto Miikkulainen, professor of computer science and head of the efforts in thrust three. 

Throughout the next 18 months, the center will host five workshops and five pilot projects, including a hackathon where researchers will use human mobility data to predict human behavior. In another pilot project, the center plans to work with professional war game designers and design an exercise for leaders to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“At the end of this 18-month period, based on what we’ve learned from these discussions and these projects, we are going to come out with a very concrete vision for the kind of science that the center will support and pursue over the next decade,” Meyers said. 

The center will have an opportunity to apply for a competitive, longer term center grant from the National Science Foundation at the end of the workshops and projects, Meyers said.

The interdisciplinary nature of the center allows for multi-faceted approaches to combating pathogenic threats, said Radu Marculescu, professor of electrical and computer engineering. 

“There are no borders anymore between different specialties,” Marculescu said. “This network and data science is a wonderful opportunity for us to come together and to work together on these kinds of problems. I see this center as a catalyzer.”