A healthy dose of information technology is being developed by Indiana University researchers and it may one day be part of the prescription health experts will write to better identify and prepare for new and baffling diseases such as the avian flu.
Network Workbench, will provide an online data-code computing resource to support biomedical and epidemiological researchers as well as social, behavioral and physics scientists. The project is fueled by a $1.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
“The cyberinfrastructure we are constructing will be a useful tool for epidemiologists to more accurately forecast and visualize the spread of pandemic influenza strains and outbreaks of diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome,” says principal investigator Katy Börner, associate professor in the School of Library and Information Science who also holds a School of Informatics adjunct appointment.
Such a tool also could be useful in tracking emerging diseases such as avian flu, also known as bird flu. The flu, which has been identified largely as occurring in Asian nations, is being monitored closely by world health officials.
Börner is joined by co-investigators Alessandro Vespignani, professor of informatics; Santiago Schnell, assistant professor of informatics; Stanley Wasserman, professor of psychology and sociology; and Albert-László Barabási, professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame. Craig A. Stewart, Ph.D., associate vice president of the IU Research and Academic Computing, is a senior collaborator on the project.
“We have a unique team of scientific experts, many of whom have made major theoretical contributions,” says Börner. “They are now taking on the challenge to build a ‘dream tool' for their respective research communities.”
Network Workbench's value also will benefit other areas of life sciences research. Biologists can use the cyberinfrastructure to consolidate and analyze data from diverse networks to understand the dynamics of genes and proteins and the roles they play in cancer, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.
The project will be evaluated in diverse research projects and educational settings in social and behavioral science and physics research, notes Börner.
“It will be well documented and available as open source for easy duplication and usage at other sites,” she says. “An annual summer school and a series of workshops and tutorials are planned to introduce the tool to diverse research communities.”
For more information about Network Workbench, go to http://nwb.slis.indiana.edu/index.html .
