EPPIcenter speaker series.The goal of Microsoft Premonition is to provide real-time and cost-effective detection and predictive forecasting of biothreats.  begins with the idea of using a mosquito-as-a-device, which can locate an animal in the environment and collect a blood sample. There are over 3,600 known species of mosquitoes feeding on reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals. If mosquitoes could be collected at scale from the environment, they might provide insight into the epidemiology and evolution of potential pathogens. 

In this talk Ethan Jackson will give an overview of program status and launch philosophy. The project uses a sensor network for mosquito capture – with a phased introduction of genomics-based threat detection (using broad-spectrum metagenomics). of the mosquitos bloodmeal. This allows: (1) low-cost digital sensing that immediately provides value to vector-borne disease prediction and AI-driven vector suppression, (2) while enabling more general modeling of arthropod population structures for many species, (3) which then serves as a basis for network-scale identification and autonomous collection of high-priority specimens that should undergo further metagenomic analysis (e.g. specimens exhibiting resistance or those that might come from habitats with high risk for disease emergence). Taken together, we envision a sensor network that adaptively optimizes how it samples and digitizes the environment to efficiently detect biothreats.

About the speaker

Dr. Ethan Jackson is a Senior Director and Principal Researcher at Microsoft Healthcare. His research focuses on intelligent systems that make people – and the environments around them – healthier. Ethan’s background is in cyber-physical systems, program verification, and programming languages, which he applies to develop novel health-related technologies.

Ethan directs Microsoft Premonition, an advanced incubation project aiming to detect the movements of potential pathogens in the environment, before they cause outbreaks in humans. Microsoft Premonition is developing robotic field biologists and metagenomic technologies to find, collect, and analyze disease-transmitting insects for both known and unknown viruses. Our systems are also designed to collect big data on insect behavior to better inform epidemiological models and public health organizations. 

Ethan is also the creator of the FORMULA system for building domain specific programming languages and enabling formal analysis of complex software, which has been used in large academic and industrial settings. He is also the co-creator of the P programming language which allows developers to specify complex systems of communicating asynchronous components, and has been used to design critical components of Microsoft Windows.

Ethan joined Microsoft Research 2007 after receiving his PhD from Vanderbilt University in Computer Science.

The EPPIcenter at UCSF https://eppicenter.ucsf.edu

The EPPIcenter brings a systems epidemiology approach to understanding complex infectious disease dynamics by integrating state-of-the-art data collection, molecular technologies, and computational analysis. Our interdisciplinary approach provides novel insight into the targeting of interventions to reduce and ultimately eliminate infectious disease burden. The EPPIcenter aims to advance the understanding of infectious diseases to reduce global morbidity and mortality. We believe that the greatest success in the fight against infectious diseases will come through a highly interdisciplinary, systems epidemiology approach, connecting traditionally siloed theoretical work, technology development, generation and collection of empiric data, and analysis using statistical and mathematical modeling.