Advancing pandemic decision making through interdisciplinary research into the emergence of novel pathogens, the dynamics of people’s behavior, and the design of adaptive strategies for mitigating uncertain threats.
More than 40 natural scientists, social scientists, computer scientists, engineers, physicians, and public health officials from 15 institutions will host five workshops and undertake five pilot studies to tackle three grand challenges:
Predicting novel pathogen threats.
Forecasting and positively influencing individual and collective responses to pathogen threats.
Integrating science into every stage of pandemic decision making, including prevention, detection, containment and mitigation.
“We must overcome our collective failure of imagination. COVID-19 took us by surprise. We spent decades planning for a pandemic that would resemble the viruses we already knew. We didn’t plan for face masks, mass testing, stay-home orders, politicized decision making or devastating racial disparities. Looking forward, we need to prepare for a much broader range of threats.”
— Lauren Ancel Meyers, 14 Lessons for the Next Pandemic, New York Times, 19 March 2021