General Questions
Q. Where can I find the report of the working group that led to this initiative?
A. The recommendations from the meeting and roster for the group are posted on the NIGMS Web site, Modeling the Emergence and Intentional Release of Pathogens Meeting Report . The concept was approved by the National Advisory General Medical Sciences Council in September 2002 (see Advisory Council Meeting Minutes).
Q. Can individual investigators apply for research project grants (R01) under MIDAS?
A. MIDAS is composed strictly of the groups who have received MIDAS collaborative agreement awards. For information on initiatives directed to R01s and other grant mechanisms, go to the funding information on the NIGMS Web site or the NIAID Web site (http://www.niaid.nih.gov/ncn/budget/default.htm).
Q. What is the long-term vision of MIDAS?
A. As a collaborative network of scientists, MIDAS leads in researching the use of computational and mathematical models that will prepare the nation to respond to outbreaks of infectious diseases.
Q. Does MIDAS play a role in planning for a national emergency such as a pandemic or act of bioterrorism?
A. Yes. The Director of NIGMS serves as the Emergency Response Director and will coordinate the response to a request from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) for modeling support.
Research Groups
Q. What research does MIDAS conduct?
A. MIDAS’s research mission includes computational and mathematical investigations of:
- Dynamics of emergence and spread of pathogens and their products
- Identification and surveillance of infectious diseases
- Effectiveness and consequences of intervention strategies
- Host/pathogen interactions
- Ecological, climatic, and evolutionary dimensions of infectious diseases outbreaks.
Q. What research groups participate in MIDAS?
Don Burke, Principal Investigator
University of Pittsburgh (Derek Cummings, Thomas Louis, Ken Cline, Greg Glass)
University of Maryland (Catherine Dibble)
Imperial College of London (Neil Ferguson)
Brookings Institute (Josh Epstein)
Ira Longini, Principal Investigator
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
University of Washington (Elizabeth Halloran)
Stephen Eubank, Principal Investigator
Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (Chris Barrett, Dick Beckman)
Richard Platt, Principal Investigator
Harvard Medical School (Martin Kuldorff – coPI, Ken Kleinman, Katherine Yih)
Brigham and Women’s Hospital (Deborah Yokoe, Susan Huang, Thomas O’Brien, John Stelling)
Massachusetts Department of Public Health (Alfred DeMaria)
Kaiser Permanente Northern California (John Hsu)
National Institute for Infectious Diseases, Argentina (Marcelo Galas)
Harvard School of Public Health (Louise Ryan)
Gary Smith, Principal Investigator
University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine
University of Warwick (Matthew Keeling)
Marc Lipsitch, Principal Investigator
Harvard School of Public Health (Jacco Wallinga, Jamie Robbins)
University
Robin Bush, Principal Investigator
The University of California at Irvine (Steven Frank)
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Nancy Cox)
Informatics Group
Q. What is MIDAS’s mission for developing resources?
A. MIDAS’s informatics mission includes:
- Developing large-scale computational resources
- Creating information and knowledge management tools
- Formulating analytical and statistical approaches
- Creating a repository for the deposition of models, results, and information
- Acquiring a variety of data relevant to modeling
- Testing and validating models.
Q. What group is managing the informatics component of MIDAS?
A. RTI International has a cooperative agreement to develop MIDAS resources and support MIDAS investigators. RTI International’s efforts are supported by SAS and IBM.
Diane Wagener , Principal Investigator
RTI International (Phil Cooley)
Q. Will MIDAS share information and resources outside of the Network?
A. MIDAS has a mission to collaborate by:
- Catalyzing discussions among modelers, policymakers, and the public health community that involve setting priorities and designing studies
- Taking leadership to ensure that MIDAS software is translated into useful tools for the public health community
- Sharing results and resources with the MIDAS network, policymakers, public health officials, and the scientific community
- Taking advantage of the intellectual capital within MIDAS to undertake projects that would be impossible for any single group.
Q. What kind of computers do you use?
A. MIDAS uses a variety of computers, both small and large. At the high end, MIDAS is using the NSF-sponsored TeraGrid (http://www.teragrid.org) to run programs on a national consortium of supercomputers. MIDAS partners with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/) for production runs and programming expertise.
For slightly small, but still quite large, computing jobs, RTI maintains two clusters with a total of 64 processors consisting of 32 nodes, 25 with 5GB of memory and 6 with 12 GB of memory each. The cluster has one management node, a storage node, and a high-speed Myrinet connection. The cluster uses high-performance AMD Opteron processors as compute nodes because they can manage heavy memory usage.
Steering Committee
Q. What is the role of the Steering Committee?
A. The Steering Committee is the main governing body of MIDAS. The committee:
- Sets milestones for the MIDAS network
- Assesses progress within the MIDAS network
- Standardizes the data format and nomenclature for the MIDAS database
- Develops guidelines and policies (e.g., for data sharing and intellectual property)
- Evaluates and votes on inclusion of associate projects
- Contributes to the development of a cohesive effort
- Alerts NIH to scientific opportunities, emerging needs, and impediments.
The Steering Committee meets twice a year in January and May.
Executive Committee
Q. Who is on the Executive Committee, and what do they do?
A. The Executive Committee is composed of the principal investigators and the NIGMS scientific director. The executive committee promotes collaboration and coordination of the MIDAS projects and ensures the high scientific quality and timeliness of MIDAS research. The committee makes decisions about scientific directions, plans meetings, addresses resource and data needs, and implements the priorities established by the steering committee. The executive committee is accountable to the steering committee.
Q. What, exactly, is the MIDAS Network?
A. The MIDAS Network consists of all of the principal investigators, scientific collaborators, programmers, data and compute experts, and students from the Research Groups and Informatics Group. The Network meets three to four times a year to coordinate, plan, and share information.
Mechanism
Q. Why are these awards cooperative agreements (U01)?
A. The U01 mechanism allows NIH staff to contribute substantially to the development of annual benchmarks, policies, and approaches. Because the program is highly focused on producing knowledge and products to serve a specific goal, NIH staff members play an integral role.
Intellectual Property
Q. Will MIDAS release data, models, and source code?
A. NIH’s policy for releasing data and intellectual property is available from the Office of Extramural Activities Intellectual Property (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/intell-property.htm) and the NIH Office of Technology Transfer Extramural Programs(http://ott.od.nih.gov/policy/spons_research.html).
MIDAS’s policy is to release data gathered from a variety of sources. Some of the data MIDAS uses is restricted by the provider because of national security or human subjects concerns. MIDAS will not add any additional restrictions. Data sets are available to registered users on the MIDAS Portal.
Results from MIDAS research will be available through publication in peer-reviewed journals, presentations at meetings and conferences, and on the MIDAS Portal. Making complicated research code into reliable tools for policymakers or public health officials is beyond the budget and scope of MIDAS.
Q. Are you concerned about privacy or HIPAA issues?
A. Yes. MIDAS complies with policies of the Federal government, DHHS, NIH, and NIGMS regarding human subjects research, privacy protection, and HIPAA. These policies are available from the Office of Extramural Research (http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/policy/hs/index.htm).
Communication
Q. How can I find out more about MIDAS?
A. Visit the MIDAS Portal at https://www.epimodels.org/midas/about.do. You may also contact:
Emily Carlson
MIDAS Media Liaison, NIGMS
carlsone@nigms.nih.gov
Irene Anne Eckstrand
MIDAS Scientific Director, NIGMS
eckstrai@nigms.nih.gov
