Project Tycho interviewed by Consumer Reports
Aug. 29, 2017
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), vaccinations that help protect children from infectious diseases have saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the U.S. and prevented millions of hospitalizations over the years. But there is so much confusing information online about vaccines for children that it can be tough to know what's true and what's not, reports Consumer Reports. The CDC recommends a vaccination schedule for children. Addressing the myth that it’s safer to space out kids' vaccines, Wilbert van Panhuis, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, responds, "The CDC bases the schedule on disease risks and vaccine effectiveness at specific ages, and the way vaccines may interact with each other. To start mixing this up is really complicated and actually can be dangerous" possibly leaving kids vulnerable to infectious diseases. Read more. |
Project Tycho participates in SMID Antwerp
May 18, 2017
Project Tycho principal investigator Wilbert van Panhuis presented Project Tycho at an international audience at the 7th Simulation and Models of Infectious Diseases (SIMID) annual meeting at the University of Anterp, organized by Drs. Philippe Beutels and Niel Hens. During this meeting, a variety of economic and epidemiological disease models were discussed, in particular agent-based simulation modeling approaches. |
Project Tycho Introduced to Indian Health Researchers
Feb. 15, 2017
In December 2016, the Public Health Dynamics Laboratory (PHDL) at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health hosted a one-week workshop titled "Empowering Indian Health Researchers with Computational Modeling Tools". Six researchers from India participated in the workshop, a collaboration between SHARE INDIA/MediCiti Institute of Medical Sciences, the Indian Institute of Public Health, Hyderabad, and the Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh. The workshop was designed to train Indian researchers in simulation and modeling and other tools developed by the PHDL. In addition to the hands-on-training in the use and application of FRED (Framework for Reconstructing Epidemiological Dynamics), an open source modeling system developed by the PHDL, Dr. Wilbert van Panhuis provided an introduction to Project Tycho. |
Project Tycho featured at Infectious Diseases and Microbiology Seminar Series
Feb. 15, 2017
Dr. Wilbert van Panhuis, lead investigator for Project Tycho and Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, was the guest speaker at the January 30th Infectious Diseases and Microbiology (IDM) Seminar Series at Pitt Public Health. Dr. Van Panhuis spoke on "Data integration to counter epidemic threats: Computational models of vector-born diseases". The talk focused on how many valuable datasets are not being used to counter epidemic threats due to challenges in accessing and standardizing datasets, and in integrating data into novel analyses such as epidemic simulation. The Project Tycho team aim to improve the acquisition, standardization, and integration of information about epidemic threats. Dr. Van Panhuis discussed the following examples: 1) Data on dengue fever from eight countries in Southeast Asia found that synchronous dengue transmission in this region coincided with elevated temperatures caused by El Niño; 2) data integrated for an agent-based simulation model of Chikungunya in Colombia, representing 45 million people in over 10 million households, schools, and workplaces, found that information about previous dengue outbreaks can help target mosquito control against Chikungunya. The current aim is to make data and epidemic simulation models easier to use and re-use by researchers and policy makers. |
Project Tycho Team Welcomes New Data Manager
Feb. 15, 2017
Tejaswi Anantaraju, MS, MBA, joins the Project Tycho team at the Public Health Dynamics Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. Tejaswi received a MS in Information Technologies from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and an MBA from Osmania University in India. He has extensive experience designing and implementing Java based e-Business/e-Commerce applications, including a web service for the Bank of New York Mellon stakeholders, along with a strong business analytics background. As Data Manager, Tejaswi will contribute to the Project Tycho data infrastructure to help the global health response against epidemic threats such as Ebola, Zika, and Dengue virus. He will assist in the design and development of the Project Tycho data acquisition workflow, assist with ongoing procurement of Project Tycho data, including data on global population health, and integration of data into the Project Tycho data system. |
Project Tycho 2.0 coming soon
Feb. 15, 2017
Project Tycho data will soon expand to a global scale by adding dengue data from countries around the world and US data for 28 additional diseases! Project Tycho data will also be further standardized by using standard disease codes and standard names for geographic locations that will greatly improve data inter-operability with other data sources. We will also update our online query system and will start accepting suggestions and submissions of datasets by the user community! Stay tuned! |
Project Tycho mentioned in Science
Feb. 2, 2017
In this editorial, Science Magazine Editor in Chief Dr. Jeremy Berg explains how data sharing can advance research on major public health challenges. Dr. Berg illustrates this potential for progress with the examples of MSSNG, a collaboration between researchers, a patient advocacy group, and a technology company that aims to sequence 10,000 genomes from families affected by autism spectrum disorder. Dr. Berg also mentioned Project Tycho as example of a large-scale data project revealing the dramatic reduction of in number of cases for major childhood diseases. Read more. |
Trump selects Anti-Vaccination Kook Robert Kennedy Jr. To Head Vaccination Safety Commission - Update:Not so fast?
Jan. 17, 2017
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Editorial: Vaccine Panel Could Do Harm
Jan. 14, 2017
The Columbus Dispatch: Editorial: Vaccine Panel Could Do Harm |
CBID Summer School in Hanoi Uses Project Tycho Data
Oct. 5, 2016
The Computational Biology for Infectious Diseases (CBID) summer school was held in Hanoi, Vietnam, September 18-25, 2016. The program was designed to provide students, researchers and professionals working on infectious diseases with basic concepts and hands-on experience in quantitative analyses of high throughput data. The school was organized in five parallel thematic groups of 15 students covering molecular phylogeny, (meta)genomics, population genetics, transmission dynamics and epidemics forecasting. Ninety students from 16 countries in Southeast Asia and from 38 institutions attended the one-week school. The trainings were led by experts in their fields from Vietnam, France, Switzerland, UK and USA. Project Tycho® data were used for mini-projects including the Southeast Asia dengue data. |
Project Tycho unlocks global health data to a rapidly growing user community of over 3,000 researchers, students, journalists, officials, and others in over 90 countries.
This website is developed and maintained for Project Tycho by the MIDAS Coordination Center (MCC). The MCC is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIGMS) program for Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS) grant U24GM132013.