Tracking the H1N1 flu outbreak is a numbers game. Now, some of the most powerful computers in the world housed in Austin are helping the government kekep up with this year’s biggest health problem.
In the hit CBS drama show “Numbers,” Charlie Eppes is a math genius who uses his incredible computation skills to help the FBI solve crimes. In real life, the bad guy is a bug. University of Texas mathematician Paul Damien is helping the federal government predict and contain contagious diseases, like the flu. The current outbreak of oH1N1 is putting theories of the best and brightest minds to the test.
“I strongly believe that if you put the right inputs into it, then the chances of saving human lives long term from H1N1 or any other virus is definitely improved,” Damien said.
At the heart of this five-year, $3 million grant project sponsored by the National Institutes of Health is a huge complex of computers at UT Austin. The supercomputer complex can take figures on outbreaks and travel and human behavior and amounts of vaccines, and come up with scenarios public health officials can follow. The information will help the government decide where vaccines will get distributed and who needs the stockpile of antivirals.
UT mathematical biologist Lauren Ancel Meyers is helping to interpret the data, which even predicts where spikes in illness may occur next. “I take this work very seriously,” Meyers explained. “I mean, I think about how it will impact other people. I think about how it will impact myself and my kids.”
Early data show there may be a third wave of H1N1 infections next spring. The information humming through the supercomputer at UT is pumping out data to make sure the nation is ready.
The flu analysis conducted by the UT supercomputer in two months would have taken 70 years on a laptop computer.
