Pei Zhang will contribute to a new NSF Center for Insights into the Pre-Emergence Phase of Pandemics

Many of the contagious illnesses that emerge to plague humans, such as H5N1 “bird flu,” originate from animal hosts. A new seven-year, $18M U.S. National Science Foundation Center for Pandemic Insights (NSF CPI) aims to develop research and technology for the detection of outbreaks of disease. Michigan is one of 10 institutions involved in the University of California, Davis led center, thanks to the contributions of Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Pei Zhang and his team.

“It is extremely exciting to work with such a cross-discipline team that allows our systems to connect sensing in the wild to understanding viruses,” said Zhang.

The center will use sensing technology to detect key events that precede pandemics, starting with monitoring of animal populations. Zhang will contribute a network of sensors to record the movement of animals, detect disease cycles, and measure features of the environment such as weather and local topography. His research team will use this information to develop multi-level models of animal space use, an important aspect of disease spread and pandemic risk.

Zhang’s research group is well-suited to this task. He has previously used GPS and proximity sensors to track the movement and social behavior of wild zebras in Kenya. He has also employed vibration sensors to record the maternal behavior of sows toward piglets, predict health risks or emergencies for elderly care home patients, and identify early signs of rare degenerative disease in children. His work at CPI will extend these methods to study pandemics.

Zhang’s sensor systems will be used to collect high quality data “at key fault lines for virus emergence,” similar to the systems used to detect earthquakes, says Christine K Johnson, center lead, professor of epidemiology and ecosystem health in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, and director of the EpiCenter for Disease Dynamics in its One Health Institute.

The partnerships through CPI are strategically set up to bring new insights into the pre-emergence phase of pandemics, transform researchers’ ability to study them, and enable safe and efficient monitoring for emerging diseases globally. In addition to UC Davis and U-M, CPI’s partner institutions include the University of Southern California, Northeastern University, Labyrinth Global Health, Texas Tech University, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, UCLA, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, UC San Diego, and Colorado State University. The center is funded through NSF’s Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention (PIPP) program.