Infectious Disease

Development of a simple, affordable low-tech transfluthrin emanator that could be readily produced en masse and protects against Culex, Mansonia, Anopheles, and Aedes mosquitoes for months or years.

Development of the Aspect connectivity platform/ software and a portable connectivity unit that enables users to understand what devices are diagnosing and take action. With easy-to-use dashboards and alerts, health systems can respond to disease as soon as they get results.

Development of one-drop-of-blood quantitative POC tests for DENV and ZIKV. The solution consists of a reader, and single-use blood test cartridges, specifically designed for targeting different viruses. The VIRO-Track cartridges have been designed and developed to be the first quantitative rapid tests able to quickly and accurately diagnose dengue, zika and chikungunya, using a single drop of blood.

Development of rapid assays with reagents stable to heat and humidity without refrigeration. The device can be operated by non-experts, and can transfer results using wi-fi. MAP uses a self-contained sample card that performs multiplexed nucleic acid tests, sequencing, and immunoassay test types.

Design a high-throughput peptide array technology to identify immunodominant peptides capable of distinguishing 10 Flavivirus taxa. Using the identified immunodominant peptides, the team will generate an indirect ELISA protocol that can be used in developing countries to accurately measure the seroprevalence of multiple Flavivirus species simultaneously, including ZIKV and be developed further into a point-of-care diagnostic.

Develop an interactive user-friendly tool that allows for nearly real-time monitoring of population movement and related Zika risk flows, thus enabling identification of new areas susceptible to Zika introduction, and prioritizing small-scale areas where Zika interventions would have the highest impact.

Develop and deploy a user-friendly tool to estimate and visualize risks posed by outbreak events reported on ProMED to the rest of the world by combining multiple data streams into a single probabilistic framework.

This project will leverage one of the most widely used Frontline Worker systems, CommCare, and cutting edge geospatial and predictive algorithms from ATLAS to identify cold spots and compute their risks for different diseases across Latin America. This information can be acted upon to gather more information to detect and manage disease outbreaks.

This program will enhance existing surveillance and vector control efforts by deploying a mobile-based data and analytics platform, which measures hyperlocal ground truth in real time. A network of local data contributors in the selected municipalities will collect geotagged data on environmental risk factors, which will be transformed into a daily heat map to enable real-time reporting for vector control workers and community leaders.

This initiative connects health education, environmental awareness, scientific discovery and community-based action in a citizen science effort with direct benefits to NASA science and public health decision-making. Using the GLOBE Program’s Mosquito Protocol, citizen scientists collect and share mosquito data and then use the data to develop a local mitigation strategy that reduces the risk of disease in their communities.