Eradicating Malaria, with the Tools at Hand: Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, Notre Dame Will Create Computer Infrastructure to Support Global Malaria Project

Via Newswise.com:

A global partnership has set its sights on nothing less than making malaria — an implacable enemy that predates the human race — nothing more than a bad memory. VECNet, the Vector Ecology and Control Network, aims to get there by combining and supporting the ingenuity of researchers, engineers, public health officials, national decision makers and funding agencies.

The idea is to create a computer model that allows malaria-battling stakeholders to join efforts.

“VECNet is about bringing order out of chaos,” says Tom Burkot, VECNet’s principal investigator and professor and tropical leader at James Cook University, Australia. “The challenge we have is that we’re trying to control and eliminate malaria in a world in which, for example, there are 40 or 50 dominant mosquito species that are important for its spread.”