Scalable, non-invasive wildlife surveillance is central to the Center for Pandemic Insight's mission, especially for species and ecosystems under threat by zoonotic diseases. The Marine Mammal Center’s hospital and visitor center based in Sausalito, California, treats up to 1,800 sick and injured seals, sea lions, sea otters, and other marine mammals each year, and this team has become a key collaborator in advancing CPI’s work.
This seemingly simple question has been the central force driving of Sarah Lagattuta's research efforts for the past four years. Bat species play critical roles in global disease dynamics, and understanding their populations is key to developing predictive models for emerging infectious disease risk. But how do we accurately count the bats ourselves, and better yet, how do we leverage machine learning to count them for us?
The “pre-emergence” phase of pandemics is the focus of a new center funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and led by the University of California, Davis. The NSF Center for Pandemic Insights (NSF CPI) aims to harness new technologies and develop sensing to detect, investigate, and ultimately prevent pandemics at their source.
