Network jumping across a city
Network jumping across a city

Contagion Science

Contacts
Sponsor

University of Virginia

The SIF-funded program proposes planning and response strategies to contagious phenomena (e.g. infectious disease outbreaks, network contagion, et al) as a complex system big science problem. This integrated science and engineering program in massively interacting networked systems considers the social, behavioral, and political dimensions applicable to contagion and pandemic science. We aim to reduce the global burden of infectious disease through a transdisciplinary approach that brings to bear ideas from different disciplines – including computation and data science, psychological, social and political sciences, economics, public health, and systems engineering – to leverage existing capabilities and knowledge to create fundamentally new ways to reduce the global burden of infectious diseases. Existing theoretical frameworks, engineering techniques, computation, data science, and tools for modeling individual components and their interactions — grounded in empirical data — will be leveraged and further developed to address the interconnected nature of disease dynamics, pandemic science, and response. Furthermore, the ideas developed as a part of this program will lead to new general theories for understanding large scale networked complex systems.

The Biocomplexity Institute serves as the organizing unit with broad and comprehensive partnership of the University of Virginia Schools of Engineering and Applied Science, Data Science, Medicine, and the College of Arts & Sciences. Together, we have agreed to join forces to pursue a preeminent presence in Contagion Science and Technology at the University of Virginia.

Systems of contagion and potential interventions and solutions span questions of basic biology, medicine, political and social science. Our cross-cutting, interdisciplinary Contagion Science program provides an umbrella for a wide range of existing, unfolding, and novel research questions that address large societal challenges. The program spans multiple UVA schools and relies heavily on information sciences, technologies, and infrastructures to foster and accelerate new collaboration between project partners.

By building on a number of prominent research initiatives at UVA by participating faculty members in the College of Arts and Science, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, School of Data Science, the School of Medicine, and the Biocomplexity Institute, the Contagion Science program aims to generate new knowledge and R&D applications aimed at transdisciplinary research topics spanning from epidemiology, network science and data science, AI, computational social, robotics, biology, and economic science, as well as social and behavioral sciences.

Program Website

Contagion Science provides an umbrella for fundamental research challenges and acknowledges that mechanisms and patterns of contagion are not limited to pandemics but occur in many areas of our modern societies.

Scientists at UVA acknowledge the need to develop cross-cutting technological computing innovations that interface with real-world societal applications to improve planning and response to contagions of this scale and impact. Fueled by a UVA grant of $5 million in support of the University’s quest to move its research from prominence to preeminence, the Contagion Science program provides a coordinated “big science” approach to exploring ways to address contagions of the magnitude we experienced with the global pandemic of the 21st century. This plan includes hiring faculty and postdoctoral associates at participating organizations.

Christopher Barrett Headshot

Christopher L. Barrett

Distinguished Professor in Biocomplexity, Biocomplexity Institute

Professor of Computer Science, School of Engineering and Applied Science

Madhav Marathe

Madhav Marathe

Executive Director

Distinguished Professor in Biocomplexity, Biocomplexity Institute

Professor of Computer Science, School of Engineering and Applied Science

Andrei Bura Headshot

Andrei Bura

Research Scientist

Jiangzhuo Chen Headshot

Jiangzhuo Chen

Research Associate Professor

Geoffrey Fox headshot

Geoffrey Fox

Professor

Professor of Computer Science, School of Engineering and Applied Science

Stefan Hoops headshot

Stefan Hoops

Research Associate Professor

Bryan Lewis New Website

Bryan Lewis

Research Associate Professor

Achla Marathe headshot

Achla Marathe

Professor

Professor of Public Health Sciences, School of Medicine

Christian Reidys headshot

Christian Reidys

Division Director

Professor of Mathematics, College of Arts and Sciences

Srini headshot

Srinivasan Venkatramanan

Research Assistant Professor

Mark Orr headshot

Mark Orr

Research Associate Professor

Andrew Warren headshot

Andrew Warren

Research Assistant Professor

Henning Mortveit headshot

Henning Mortveit

Associate Professor

Associate Professor of Engineering Systems and Environment, School of Engineering and Applied Science

Anil headshot

Anil Vullikanti

Professor

Professor of Computer Science, School of Engineering and Applied Science

UVA Rotunda during fall

Lucius Lichte

Project Manager

The Contagion Science program community is open to all interested researchers and faculty at UVA and beyond. In addition to members at BI, it includes more than 20 faculty members from the School of Medicine, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the School of Data Science, and the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

City with network lights

Contagion Science Program Kicks Off to a Good Start

In alignment with the University of Virginia’s goal to move its research from prominence to preeminence, deans, faculty, and researchers from across Grounds got together to participate in the formal launch of the Contagion Science program, an initiative funded by the University as part of its Prominence-to-Preeminence STEM initiative.