When people think about infectious disease outbreaks, it’s easy to focus on the pathogen itself. But according to researchers at the University of Virginia’s Biocomplexity Institute, understanding how diseases spread often has less to do with biology alone and more to do with the complex networks of people, places, and behaviors through which they move.
Voices of Biocomplexity (VoBI) brings together researchers, students, and collaborators to explore the ideas, discoveries, and real-world challenges that define the Institute’s work. The inaugural episode, “The Supercomputer I Didn’t Understand,” was inspired by a news article about China’s announcement of a CPU-based supercomputer.
When Ebola swept through West Africa in 2014, public health officials faced a difficult challenge: decisions had to be made quickly, often with incomplete information and rapidly changing conditions on the ground.
Researchers at the Biocomplexity Institute were among the teams called upon to help.