Notes from the STEM Community Call on Thursday, January 12, 2017
On the call: Jamie Kaufman, Stefan Edlund, Kun Hu, Chris Thoens, Taras Guenther, Nereyda Sevilla, Ted Lin Hu, Chris Przbyszewski, Judy Douglas
NEXT CALL: Thursday, February 2, 2017
Welcome to two new participants, Chris Przybyszewski, corporate vice president, and Ted Ling Hu, Biomedical Informatics Analyst, from US Biologic, a social innovation company focused on preventing disease
1. STEM 3.0.0 Milestone 4 up 11/13/2016: Stefan
*Milestone doesn’t include bug fix on UI
*02/02/2017: Milestone 5 will include, metadata on bug fixes will also be updated
2. Updates: Kun
*In Singapore, presented to Minister of Health, issued invitation to Almaden
*In Panama, will work 3 weeks with CDC like agency to develop mobile app for disease surveillance
3. Disease models
*Ebola with zoonotic reservoir: Simone Bianco has paper coming out
*Zika model: Kun Hu reports queries on forum; new paper with compartment model
4. Work at BfR: Taras
*Parameterized simulations: issue with disease deaths/population; perhaps build workaround? Chris Thoens will help; model inherits compartments, not transitions; Taras will test two approaches to model
*Triggering interventions: difficulty setting; emf problem resolved (see bugs)
*External data initializers: thanks to Emily Nixon, UK, for her work and documentation
*New batch experiment: updated by Taras and Matthias
6. Bugs
*STEM won’t build (?): query from chojunki@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx in Korea; no details, unsure as to nature
*New emf bug: fixed
6. Items from participants
*Ted and Chris, US Biologic, Lyme Disease Presentation: Using coated pellet vaccine in wild mice; plan to use STEM to better predict disease expansion and locate acre by acre for optimal application; hope to develop partnerships, mentorships, international outreach; presentation sent via stem.dev, see online
*Nereyda: planning to do comparison of finite difference and stochastic solvers; working with FAA on air travel as disease vector; per Jamie, may want to try a real integration solver
*Taras: other issues with changing parameters in batch experiments; using Monte Carlo simulation, resetting Ro after every 1000 simulations; per Jamie, may want to look at work fish farm industry did with salmon anemia virus calculating radius at which Ro would fall below 1; per Jamie, need better understanding of problem, will take discussion offline