By Noah Lloyd
The next epidemic is coming — it’s simply a question of when.
Network science researchers at Northeastern University are developing artificial intelligence tools that could predict what will happen the next time an epidemic breaks out — tools that may even help prevent it in the first place.
“Our goal is to improve the human condition by improving our understanding of how sociotechnical systems function,” says Samuel Scarpino, the director of AI and life sciences at the Institute for Experiential AI.
Scarpino is a co-author of a new paper published in Nature that describes how artificial intelligence can be leveraged to model future infectious disease epidemics.
Network science, Scarpino explains, provides “a common language” researchers can use to study systems that operate at multiple scales, from “cellular-level processes for things like cancer, all the way up to population-level processes like pandemics and epidemics.”
“If it sounds broad, it is,” Scarpino adds.
