The mission of Pandemic ESCAPE is to advance our understanding of pandemic emergence and resilience within the nexus of human behavior, wildlife, and the environment.
Mission
Pandemic ESCAPE came into existence as a result of funding from the National Science Foundation with its Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention (PIPP) grant. The aim of the PIPP grant is to transform society's ability to forecast the likelihood of pandemic-scale events, detect outbreaks early, and respond efficiently. ESCAPE plans to tackle that challenge in a number of different ways:
- Development of easy-to-use, cost-effective technologies for testing environmental samples for pathogens
- Creation of innovative bioinformatics pipelines that allow for quick and easy metagenomic sequencing of newly discovered pathogens
- Working with communities with minimal access to healthcare services to tailor education and testing methodologies to their needs
- Training the next generation of scientists in environmental surveillance techniques
- Working alongside public health officials to understand their needs and tailoring outputs to maximize actionability of results
Disclaimer
This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement No. 2412446. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.