The research, which envisions collaboration between Poland, Ukraine, and the US, is called Modelowanie i prognozowanie rozprzestrzeniania się infekcji w czasie wojny i okresie powojennym z wykorzystaniem danych z nadzoru epidemiologicznego, behawioralnego i genomicznego (Modeling and Predicting the Spread of Infections in the Wartime and Postwar Period based on Epidemiological, Behavioral, and Genomic Surveillance Data).
The project is going to be conducted by Lodz University of Technology, Łukasiewicz Research Network - PORT Polish Center for Technology Development (Wrocław), the American Georgia State University and the University of Connecticut, and the Ukrainian Kharkiv National Medical University and Kharkiv Region Center for Disease Control and Prevention of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine. Lodz University of Technology is the project lead, and doc. dr hab. Sergiy Yakovlev is the project manager. The researchers from both Polish institutions are to receive nearly 1.67 million złoty from the IMPRESS- U scheme to carry out the research.
The principal objective of the project is to develop epidemiological models and optimization algorithms for the prediction of epidemiological trends during and after armed conflict. The results are expected to enable the identification of possible courses of action and support decision-making processes related to the prevention of epidemics and with guidelines for the improvement of public health. The main focus during the project will be on solving the following problems: developing epidemiological models geared for conflict zones, integrating conflict-focused epidemiological models with population genetics based on a phylodynamic approach, developing algorithms optimizing resource allocation for public health.
The Polish group includes experts in mathematical modeling for epidemiology, dynamic systems, and nonlinear analysis, machine learning and fractal analysis, optimization and operations research. The Americans are experienced in projects involving mathematical and genomic epidemiology and computational biology. The Ukrainian researchers have contextual insight and are going to contribute statistical data on the spread of infectious diseases in the Kharkiv region, which are to be supplemented with information from publicly available sources.
The project takes an immediate focus on the Kharkiv region, nevertheless, the findings of the research are expected to be transferable to other regions afflicted by armed conflict, both in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world.