Developed by infectious disease scientists, VISTA uses AI-assisted tools and expert opinion to explore and compare hundreds of virus, host, and environmental risk factors to identify viruses with pandemic potential.
UC Davis developed the SpillOver Viral Risk Ranking tool for policy makers, scientists and the general public to assess the likelihood that a wildlife virus will spillover and spread in humans. Now, in partnership with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), UC Davis is working on SpillOvers 2.0 through the Virus Intelligence & Strategic Threat Assessment (VISTA) project, to expand the tool to assess the epidemic and pandemic potential of additional wildlife-hosted viruses along with domestic animal-hosted viruses.
Working with global experts, VISTA calculates risk scores for more than a thousand viruses using data collated across various publicly available literature and datasets. To ensure the tool includes the most up-to-date data possible, we are incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools for near real-time identification and prioritization of emerging virus threats.
In addition, through partnerships with Boston University and Boston Children’s Hospital’s Biothreats Emergence, Analysis and Communications Network (BEACON) project, VISTA is supporting initiatives to provide early warning for timely identification and response to disease threats
Our work is supporting CEPI’s 100 Day Mission – aiming for just 100 days to make a safe and effective vaccine against any viral pandemic threat to contain outbreaks before they spiral out of control.
Our Team
Angel Desai, Principal Investigator. Angel is an infectious disease specialist offering care for patients with various general infectious disease conditions. She has special clinical interest and expertise in emerging infectious diseases, outbreaks, special pathogens, infection prevention and control, and tropical medicine.
Simon Anthony, Co-Investigator. Simon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. His research focuses on critical questions surrounding viruses in wildlife and their potential for zoonotic spillover. With VISTA, Simon is our virology expert and is also supporting CEPI’s coronavirus vaccine library working group.
Jonna Mazet, Senior Advisor. Jonna was the lead for developing the original SpillOver tool, and is the Vice Provost of Grand Challenges and the Chancellor’s Leadership Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology and Disease Ecology at UC Davis, where she founded the One Health Institute. Prof. Mazet is active in global health problem-solving, especially for emerging infectious disease and conservation challenges.
Nistara Randhawa, Data Scientist. Nistara is the VISTA team’s lead data scientist. Her research entails network modeling of disease epidemics and spatial analyses of viruses. Nistara has a special interest in R programming, and is an affiliate of the UC Davis Data Science Initiative and the R Epidemics Consortium.
Jianye Ge, Data Scientist. Jianye is the VISTA team’s artificial intelligence (AI) expert and is building our Large Language Model and integrating AI tools for near real-time optimization of our platform’s virus risk rankings.
Jane Fieldhouse, Postdoctoral Scientist. Jane is our team’s expert helping identify new risk factors for virus rankings and integrating qualitative expert data with the data science team’s artificial intelligence tools.
Heather Wells, Postdoctoral Scientist. Heather is utilizing her background in mathematics and computer programming to study evolutionary mechanisms associated with the spillover of viruses from wildlife. Together with Simon, Heather provides critical virology expertise and is supporting CEPI’s coronavirus vaccine library working group.
David Wolking, Project Manager. David is the team’s senior project manager and communications lead. He was formerly the Global Operations lead for the PREDICT project, which developed the original SpillOvers tool. He manages projects with the One Health Institute and is the program manager for Grand Challenges Emerging Health Threats.
Liz Leasure, Financial Manager. Liz is the Financial Operations Manager based at the One Health Institute.
Grace Kim, Administrative Assistant. Grace is the team’s administrative assistant supporting all aspects of the project.
Partners & Collaborators
- Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) Disease X programme
- Anthony lab, UC Davis
- One Health Institute, UC Davis
- Lab for Data Intensive Biology, UC Davis
- BEACON project, Boston University and Boston Children’s Hospital
- Argonne National Laboratory
Contact
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