stem/index.php - www.eclipse.org/proposals - Git at Google

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     <div id="maincontent">
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 <h1>STEM, The Spatiotemporal Epidemiological Modeler</h1>
 </p>
 <?php
 include_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/projects/fragments/proposal-page-header.php");
 generate_header("STEM");
 ?>


 <p> This document is a proposal to create a new Eclipse Project under
 the <a href="/technology/">Eclipse Technology Project</a> called the
 Spatiotemporal Epidemiological Modeler or <a
 href="http://www.eclipse.org/ohf/components/stem/">STEM</a>. STEM is
 currently a component of the <a
 href="http://www.eclipse.org/ohf/">Open Healthcare Framework (OHF)</a>
 project, which is also under the
 Eclipse
 Technology Project.</p>

 <p>This proposal is presented in accordance with the <a
 href="/projects/dev_process/proposal-phase.php">Eclipse Development
 Process</a> and is written to declare the project's intent and scope
 as well as to solicit additional participation and feedback from the
 Eclipse community. You are invited to join the project and to provide
 feedback using the <a
 href="http://www.eclipse.org/newsportal/thread.php?group=eclipse.technology.ohf">
 http://www.eclipse.org/newsportal/thread.php?group=eclipse.technology.ohf
 </a>newsgroup.</p>

 <h2>Background</h2>

 <p> In the past year (2008), the OHF has seen all of its components,
 other than STEM, migrate either to other parts of Eclipse
 (e.g., <ahref="http://www.eclipse.org/ohf/components/soda/"> SODA</a>) or to
 the external <a href="http://www.openhealthtools.org/"> Open
 Healthcare Tools (OHT )</a> organization. This has left STEM as the
 only active component in the OHF. . The consensus of the four STEM
 committers is that they are very happy with Eclipse and how it is
 managed and wish the project to remain with the Foundation. However,
 given that the rest of the OHF project has moved, it makes sense to
 move STEM out of the OHF and place it directly under the <a
 href="/technology/">Eclipse Technology Project</a>. The STEM project
 members are looking forward to being a project separate from the OHF
 to better establish their "brand" and facilitate communications with
 users, contributors and adopters. One of the challenges of being a
 component of the OHF is that STEM was mixed in with many different,
 completely unrelated, projects; this included sharing a project web
 page, newsgroup, developer mailing list and project metadata. This
 sharing tended to dilute STEM's effectiveness in communicating with
 and developing its community. For instance, the OHF project metadata
 is out-of-date and has been for some time; the STEM project has been
 unable to correct that issue.
 </p>


 <p> STEM began life as a platform for the collaborative development of
 mathematical models that characterize the spread of infectious
 diseases in both time and space. STEM was originally developed by <a
 href="http://www.research.ibm.com/">IBM Research</a> at its <a
 href="http://www.almaden.ibm.com/">Almaden Research Center</a> to be
 part of <a
 href="http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/19640.wss"> IBM's
 Global Pandemic Initiative (GPI)</a>, a working group of global
 healthcare "players" (WHO, UN, etc) that IBM formed to help plan for,
 and combat, the threat of global pandemic influenza. As part of its
 contribution to the GPI, IBM <a
 href="http://www-03.ibm.com/industries/government/us/detail/news/G708487G68482D55.html">
 donated</a> the source code for STEM to the Eclipse foundation in May
 2007. </p>

 <p> STEM enables epidemiologists and other researchers to develop
 disease models quickly and collaboratively. STEM includes the basic
 data sets that define the political geography, demographic data and
 transportation infrastructure for the entire planet, saving the need
 for modelers to collect this data on their own. It also includes
 configurable "text book" disease models they can use immediately and
 extensive editors and wizards that ease model creation. STEM includes
 built-in views to visualize the geographic spread of diseases as well
 as an interface to <a href="http://earth.google.com/"> Google
 Earth</a>. Each disease model is composed of a set of interchangeable
 components that supply different aspects of the model, these include
 data sets, as well as mathematics. These components can be created by
 different researchers and easily shared, thereby fostering cooperation
 and collaboration. As a diease modeling system, STEM has an active and
 growing community. </p>

 <h2>Technical Scope </h2>

 <p> At its core, STEM is a framework for composing arbitrary graphs
 (nodes, edges, labels) from different "parts" and then managing
 computations that use the graph as both a source of data and as place
 to record state information. One of the main innovations provided by
 STEM is that it allows the graph used during a simulation to be
 composed from different parts that represent different aspects of the
 eventual simulation. For instance, sets of labeled nodes that
 represent geographic locations can be combined with sets of labels
 that provide population data for those edges for a particular time
 period (e.g., 1918). Similarly, different sets of edges can be added
 to the graph to incorporate different kinds of relationships, such as
 transportation infrastructure or simple physical relationships such as
 sharing a common border. Computation is added to the mix through a
 similar well defined interface to the graph. These different parts
 can be aggregated and saved for reuse in multiple different models.
 They can also be exported and distributed to other users. It is this
 aggregation and reuse that promotes collaboration as different
 components can be created by different parties and easily shared.
 </p>

 <p> Having such a general framework enables a variety of other kinds
 of applications, not all of which are simulations. It is possible,
 for instance, to run STEM in "real-time" where it uses "wall-clock"
 time when manipulating the state of the underlying graph and have it
 access external data sources as part of that process. Integrating
 real-time weather information or other real-time environmental data
 into a model in STEM is an example. This ability allows STEM to be
 applied to decision support applications that require the integration
 of "situational awareness" and analytics; examples would be disaster
 planning and response, securities trading and risk management and
 logistical planning. The integration of external data sources through
 SOA and RSS feeds is a future step being considered for the project.
 </p>

 <p> The disease modeling framework, built upon the core, has well
 established functionality, but is deliberately designed to be
 extensible and has an unlimited capacity to absorb new mathematics and
 other aspects of disease models. For the project, however, it aims to
 provide a refined, but limited, set of built-in "text book" disease
 model mathematics as well as another set of advanced experimental
 models that result from project member's own research. </p>

 <p> The incorporation of real-time data sources into STEM is an area
 for future development. The scope and breadth of which is uncertain
 and likely dependent on the particular application domains used as
 examples. </p>


 <p> There are two aspects to STEM, the core for developing simulation
 frameworks, and actual simulation frameworks.  The mandates for
 developing both of these aspects tend to define and govern their
 growth.  The core for simulation frameworks is somewhat organically
 constrained as features are only added to it to support the needs of
 actual simulation frameworks such as disease modeling.  The base
 comprises some nine EMF Ecore models that are used to generate a
 significant portion of the core code; no new models are anticipated at
 this time.  The remainder of the work on the core is to polish and
 refine aspects of the core exposed to users such as model editors,
 wizards and other parts of the GUI.  </p>


 <p> STEM is more than a disease modeling system, however, the same
 attributes that make a good collaborative system for disease modeling
 are the same ones that facilitate other kinds of model development.
 To this end, STEM was designed and implemented from its very inception
 to be a more versatile platform and framework, with disease modeling
 being a very complete example "application."  </p>

 <h2>Organization</h2>

 <h3>Mentors</h3>
 <ul>
 <li>Ed Merks</li>
 <li>Chris Aniszczyk</li>
 </ul>


 <h3>Committers</h3>
 STEM currently has four existing and active Eclipse Committers.

 <ul>

 <li> <p> Daniel Ford (daford att almaden.ibm.com) </p> <p> Daniel
 was the initial Eclipse Committer for STEM. His contributions to the
 system include the initial concept of a composable graph framework and
 the general architecture and organization of STEM.  He also designed
 the UML models that underpin STEM's implementation and is responsible
 for their implementation using the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF).
 Daniel wrote the initial versions of most of the components that
 constituted the original STEM contribution, and continues to maintain
 a significant number of them today.  Daniel created the initial CQ for
 STEM's source code and a second one for STEM's data sets.  He worked
 closing with Barb Cochrane on the Eclipse IP process to quickly
 "clear" the original STEM source code contribution. He also worked on
 the initial part of the (much) longer IP processing of the STEM data
 sets (later passing that responsibility to James Kaufman).  Daniel
 received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo
 and is now a Research Staff Member (RSM) at the IBM Almaden Research
 Center in San Jose, CA. </p> </li>

 <li><p> James Kaufman (kaufman att almaden.ibm.com) </p><p> James
 founded the STEM project with Daniel Ford and was the project's second
 Eclipse committer.  James' has a wide range of contributions to the
 OHF and the STEM project under Eclipse. He initiated the formation of
 the OHF and as the IBM manager of a number of internal IBM Research
 Healthcare related projects, pursued the legal and organizational
 challenges that lead to their donation to Eclipse to form the initial
 OHF code base.  Later, James followed the same path with STEM and
 moved it from an internal IBM Research project to an open source
 project under Eclipse.  James is also an active and critical
 contributor to the STEM code base with primary responsibility in the
 development and implementation of mathematical models for the
 characterization of disease propagation and the development and
 implementation of mathematical tools and for epidemiological data
 analysis in STEM.  James also worked closely with the IBM and Eclipse
 legal teams to "clear" the STEM contribution to Eclipse. James
 received his Ph.D. in Physics from UCSB and is a Manager and Research
 Staff Member at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA.</p>
 </li>

 <li><p> Stefan Edlund (sedlund att us.ibm.com)</p> <p> Stefan Edlund
 is an Eclipse Committer has contributed to STEM since August
 2008. Stefan has been working on the logging component in STEM,
 dramatically improving its performance. Stefan has also been
 contributing to the analytics perspective as well as the mathematics
 for STEM disease models. Stefan Edlund is a Senior Software Engineer
 at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA.</p> </li>

 <li><p> Yossi Mesika (mesika att il.ibm.com) </p><p> Yossi is an
 Eclipse Committer who contributed several new features and
 improvements to the STEM project. Yossi worked on the graphical
 rendering of the geographical maps within STEM and added some useful
 features like presenting graph edges and the use of color
 providers. Yossi also used performance testing tools for finding
 memory leaks and improving the overall performance of STEM. Yossi is
 also the release engineer of STEM and responsible for the automatic
 process of generating weekly builds and publishing those in the Web
 site. Yossi had also made major contributions to the Eclipse Open
 Health Framework (OHF). Yossi is a Research Staff Member at the IBM
 Haifa Research Labs in Israel.</p> </li>

 </ul>


 <h3>Collaborations</h3>

 <p> The STEM project is working on the development of its community.
 The project is doing well in developing a core set of <b>Committers</b> and
 <b>Users</b> (listed below).  The project is working hard on
 developing relationships with government, industry and academia.  In
 academia, the project is nurturing graduate students in both
 Epidemiology and Operations Research to create a natural class of
 <b>Adopters</b> to join the project.  </p>

 <ul>

 <li> <p> <a href="http://www.hq.af.mil/"> USAF</a>: STEM currently has
 multi-year funding from the United States Air Force for the general
 development of the framework as well as for research into specialized
 analytics for "reverse engineering" disease model configurations from
 incident data. </p></li>

 <li><p> <a href="http://www.uvm.edu/">University of Vermont</a>: STEM
 has a successful ongoing collaboration with researchers Dr. Charles
 Hulse (Charles.Hulse at uvm.edu) and Joanna Conant (Joanna.Conant at
 uvm.edu) at the University of Vermont.  This collaboration has
 resulted in one paper with more likely to come in the future.  </p>

 <p> Kaufman, J., Connance, J., Ford, D.A., Kirhata, W., Jones, B.A.,
 Douglas, J.V., "Assessing the Accuracy of Spatiotemporal
 Epidemiological Models,"  BioSecure 2008, Raleigh, North Carolina,
 Dec. 2, 2008.</p> </li>

 <li> <p> <a href="www.jhu.edu">Johns Hopkins</a>: The STEM project
 also collaborates with the <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/">Johns
 Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health</a>, where we work with
 Epidemiology Ph.D., Graduate Student Justin Lesler on the validation
 of the mathematics of our disease models. (Full Disclosure: IBM pays
 Justin Lessler for this work). </p></li>

 <li><p><a href="www.mit.edu>">MIT</a>: STEM has an ongoing
 collaboration with Professor Dick Larson, in the <a
 href="http://www.mit.edu/~orc/">Operations Research Department</a> at
 MIT for the development of advanced disease models.</p></li>

 <li><p><a href="http://www.mecids.org/index.php"> Middle East
 Consortium for Infectious Disease Surveillance</a> (MECIDS): An
 organization supported by the <a
 href="http://www.nti.org/index.php">Nuclear Threat Initiative</a>
 (NTI) and <a href="http://www.sfcg.org/">Search for Common Ground</a>,
 which includes the public health departments of <a
 href="http://www.health.gov.il/english/"> Israeli<a>, <a
 href="http://www.moh.gov.jo/MOH/En/home.php">Jordan</a>, and <a
 href="http://www.moh.gov.ps/">Palestinian</a>.  As well as <a
 href="http://www.tau.ac.il/index-eng.html"> Tel Aviv University</a>
 and <a href="http://www.alquds.edu/index.php"> Al Quds University
 </a>.

 </p></li>

 <li><p> <a href="http://www.publichealth.pitt.edu/"> University of
 Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health</a> and <a
 href="http://www.medschool.pitt.edu/"> School of Medicine</a>,
 Prof. Burce Lee</p></li>

 </ul>

 <h2>Tentative Plan </h2><p>

 2009-06 V0.4: Base release for Disease modeling
 2009-12 V0.5: Non-disease modeling example application
 2010-06 V0.6: Integrated situational awareness and analytics


       </div>
   </div>
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	<div id="maincontent">
	<div id="midcolumn">

	<h1>STEM, The Spatiotemporal Epidemiological Modeler</h1>
	</p>
	<?php
	include_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/projects/fragments/proposal-page-header.php");
	generate_header("STEM");
	?>




	<p> This document is a proposal to create a new Eclipse Project under
	the <a href="/technology/">Eclipse Technology Project</a> called the
	Spatiotemporal Epidemiological Modeler or <a
	href="http://www.eclipse.org/ohf/components/stem/">STEM</a>. STEM is
	currently a component of the <a
	href="http://www.eclipse.org/ohf/">Open Healthcare Framework (OHF)</a>
	project, which is also under the
	Eclipse
	Technology Project.</p>

	<p>This proposal is presented in accordance with the <a
	href="/projects/dev_process/proposal-phase.php">Eclipse Development
	Process</a> and is written to declare the project's intent and scope
	as well as to solicit additional participation and feedback from the
	Eclipse community. You are invited to join the project and to provide
	feedback using the <a
	href="http://www.eclipse.org/newsportal/thread.php?group=eclipse.technology.ohf">
	http://www.eclipse.org/newsportal/thread.php?group=eclipse.technology.ohf
	</a>newsgroup.</p>

	<h2>Background</h2>

	<p> In the past year (2008), the OHF has seen all of its components,
	other than STEM, migrate either to other parts of Eclipse
	(e.g., <ahref="http://www.eclipse.org/ohf/components/soda/"> SODA</a>) or to
	the external <a href="http://www.openhealthtools.org/"> Open
	Healthcare Tools (OHT )</a> organization. This has left STEM as the
	only active component in the OHF. . The consensus of the four STEM
	committers is that they are very happy with Eclipse and how it is
	managed and wish the project to remain with the Foundation. However,
	given that the rest of the OHF project has moved, it makes sense to
	move STEM out of the OHF and place it directly under the <a
	href="/technology/">Eclipse Technology Project</a>. The STEM project
	members are looking forward to being a project separate from the OHF
	to better establish their "brand" and facilitate communications with
	users, contributors and adopters. One of the challenges of being a
	component of the OHF is that STEM was mixed in with many different,
	completely unrelated, projects; this included sharing a project web
	page, newsgroup, developer mailing list and project metadata. This
	sharing tended to dilute STEM's effectiveness in communicating with
	and developing its community. For instance, the OHF project metadata
	is out-of-date and has been for some time; the STEM project has been
	unable to correct that issue.
	</p>


	<p> STEM began life as a platform for the collaborative development of
	mathematical models that characterize the spread of infectious
	diseases in both time and space. STEM was originally developed by <a
	href="http://www.research.ibm.com/">IBM Research</a> at its <a
	href="http://www.almaden.ibm.com/">Almaden Research Center</a> to be
	part of <a
	href="http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/19640.wss"> IBM's
	Global Pandemic Initiative (GPI)</a>, a working group of global
	healthcare "players" (WHO, UN, etc) that IBM formed to help plan for,
	and combat, the threat of global pandemic influenza. As part of its
	contribution to the GPI, IBM <a
	href="http://www-03.ibm.com/industries/government/us/detail/news/G708487G68482D55.html">
	donated</a> the source code for STEM to the Eclipse foundation in May
	2007. </p>

	<p> STEM enables epidemiologists and other researchers to develop
	disease models quickly and collaboratively. STEM includes the basic
	data sets that define the political geography, demographic data and
	transportation infrastructure for the entire planet, saving the need
	for modelers to collect this data on their own. It also includes
	configurable "text book" disease models they can use immediately and
	extensive editors and wizards that ease model creation. STEM includes
	built-in views to visualize the geographic spread of diseases as well
	as an interface to <a href="http://earth.google.com/"> Google
	Earth</a>. Each disease model is composed of a set of interchangeable
	components that supply different aspects of the model, these include
	data sets, as well as mathematics. These components can be created by
	different researchers and easily shared, thereby fostering cooperation
	and collaboration. As a diease modeling system, STEM has an active and
	growing community. </p>

	<h2>Technical Scope </h2>

	<p> At its core, STEM is a framework for composing arbitrary graphs
	(nodes, edges, labels) from different "parts" and then managing
	computations that use the graph as both a source of data and as place
	to record state information. One of the main innovations provided by
	STEM is that it allows the graph used during a simulation to be
	composed from different parts that represent different aspects of the
	eventual simulation. For instance, sets of labeled nodes that
	represent geographic locations can be combined with sets of labels
	that provide population data for those edges for a particular time
	period (e.g., 1918). Similarly, different sets of edges can be added
	to the graph to incorporate different kinds of relationships, such as
	transportation infrastructure or simple physical relationships such as
	sharing a common border. Computation is added to the mix through a
	similar well defined interface to the graph. These different parts
	can be aggregated and saved for reuse in multiple different models.
	They can also be exported and distributed to other users. It is this
	aggregation and reuse that promotes collaboration as different
	components can be created by different parties and easily shared.
	</p>

	<p> Having such a general framework enables a variety of other kinds
	of applications, not all of which are simulations. It is possible,
	for instance, to run STEM in "real-time" where it uses "wall-clock"
	time when manipulating the state of the underlying graph and have it
	access external data sources as part of that process. Integrating
	real-time weather information or other real-time environmental data
	into a model in STEM is an example. This ability allows STEM to be
	applied to decision support applications that require the integration
	of "situational awareness" and analytics; examples would be disaster
	planning and response, securities trading and risk management and
	logistical planning. The integration of external data sources through
	SOA and RSS feeds is a future step being considered for the project.
	</p>

	<p> The disease modeling framework, built upon the core, has well
	established functionality, but is deliberately designed to be
	extensible and has an unlimited capacity to absorb new mathematics and
	other aspects of disease models. For the project, however, it aims to
	provide a refined, but limited, set of built-in "text book" disease
	model mathematics as well as another set of advanced experimental
	models that result from project member's own research. </p>

	<p> The incorporation of real-time data sources into STEM is an area
	for future development. The scope and breadth of which is uncertain
	and likely dependent on the particular application domains used as
	examples. </p>


	<p> There are two aspects to STEM, the core for developing simulation
	frameworks, and actual simulation frameworks. The mandates for
	developing both of these aspects tend to define and govern their
	growth. The core for simulation frameworks is somewhat organically
	constrained as features are only added to it to support the needs of
	actual simulation frameworks such as disease modeling. The base
	comprises some nine EMF Ecore models that are used to generate a
	significant portion of the core code; no new models are anticipated at
	this time. The remainder of the work on the core is to polish and
	refine aspects of the core exposed to users such as model editors,
	wizards and other parts of the GUI. </p>


	<p> STEM is more than a disease modeling system, however, the same
	attributes that make a good collaborative system for disease modeling
	are the same ones that facilitate other kinds of model development.
	To this end, STEM was designed and implemented from its very inception
	to be a more versatile platform and framework, with disease modeling
	being a very complete example "application." </p>

	<h2>Organization</h2>

	<h3>Mentors</h3>
	<ul>
	<li>Ed Merks</li>
	<li>Chris Aniszczyk</li>
	</ul>


	<h3>Committers</h3>
	STEM currently has four existing and active Eclipse Committers.

	<ul>

	<li> <p> Daniel Ford (daford att almaden.ibm.com) </p> <p> Daniel
	was the initial Eclipse Committer for STEM. His contributions to the
	system include the initial concept of a composable graph framework and
	the general architecture and organization of STEM. He also designed
	the UML models that underpin STEM's implementation and is responsible
	for their implementation using the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF).
	Daniel wrote the initial versions of most of the components that
	constituted the original STEM contribution, and continues to maintain
	a significant number of them today. Daniel created the initial CQ for
	STEM's source code and a second one for STEM's data sets. He worked
	closing with Barb Cochrane on the Eclipse IP process to quickly
	"clear" the original STEM source code contribution. He also worked on
	the initial part of the (much) longer IP processing of the STEM data
	sets (later passing that responsibility to James Kaufman). Daniel
	received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo
	and is now a Research Staff Member (RSM) at the IBM Almaden Research
	Center in San Jose, CA. </p> </li>

	<li><p> James Kaufman (kaufman att almaden.ibm.com) </p><p> James
	founded the STEM project with Daniel Ford and was the project's second
	Eclipse committer. James' has a wide range of contributions to the
	OHF and the STEM project under Eclipse. He initiated the formation of
	the OHF and as the IBM manager of a number of internal IBM Research
	Healthcare related projects, pursued the legal and organizational
	challenges that lead to their donation to Eclipse to form the initial
	OHF code base. Later, James followed the same path with STEM and
	moved it from an internal IBM Research project to an open source
	project under Eclipse. James is also an active and critical
	contributor to the STEM code base with primary responsibility in the
	development and implementation of mathematical models for the
	characterization of disease propagation and the development and
	implementation of mathematical tools and for epidemiological data
	analysis in STEM. James also worked closely with the IBM and Eclipse
	legal teams to "clear" the STEM contribution to Eclipse. James
	received his Ph.D. in Physics from UCSB and is a Manager and Research
	Staff Member at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA.</p>
	</li>

	<li><p> Stefan Edlund (sedlund att us.ibm.com)</p> <p> Stefan Edlund
	is an Eclipse Committer has contributed to STEM since August
	2008. Stefan has been working on the logging component in STEM,
	dramatically improving its performance. Stefan has also been
	contributing to the analytics perspective as well as the mathematics
	for STEM disease models. Stefan Edlund is a Senior Software Engineer
	at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA.</p> </li>

	<li><p> Yossi Mesika (mesika att il.ibm.com) </p><p> Yossi is an
	Eclipse Committer who contributed several new features and
	improvements to the STEM project. Yossi worked on the graphical
	rendering of the geographical maps within STEM and added some useful
	features like presenting graph edges and the use of color
	providers. Yossi also used performance testing tools for finding
	memory leaks and improving the overall performance of STEM. Yossi is
	also the release engineer of STEM and responsible for the automatic
	process of generating weekly builds and publishing those in the Web
	site. Yossi had also made major contributions to the Eclipse Open
	Health Framework (OHF). Yossi is a Research Staff Member at the IBM
	Haifa Research Labs in Israel.</p> </li>

	</ul>


	<h3>Collaborations</h3>

	<p> The STEM project is working on the development of its community.
	The project is doing well in developing a core set of <b>Committers</b> and
	<b>Users</b> (listed below). The project is working hard on
	developing relationships with government, industry and academia. In
	academia, the project is nurturing graduate students in both
	Epidemiology and Operations Research to create a natural class of
	<b>Adopters</b> to join the project. </p>

	<ul>

	<li> <p> <a href="http://www.hq.af.mil/"> USAF</a>: STEM currently has
	multi-year funding from the United States Air Force for the general
	development of the framework as well as for research into specialized
	analytics for "reverse engineering" disease model configurations from
	incident data. </p></li>

	<li><p> <a href="http://www.uvm.edu/">University of Vermont</a>: STEM
	has a successful ongoing collaboration with researchers Dr. Charles
	Hulse (Charles.Hulse at uvm.edu) and Joanna Conant (Joanna.Conant at
	uvm.edu) at the University of Vermont. This collaboration has
	resulted in one paper with more likely to come in the future. </p>

	<p> Kaufman, J., Connance, J., Ford, D.A., Kirhata, W., Jones, B.A.,
	Douglas, J.V., "Assessing the Accuracy of Spatiotemporal
	Epidemiological Models," BioSecure 2008, Raleigh, North Carolina,
	Dec. 2, 2008.</p> </li>

	<li> <p> <a href="www.jhu.edu">Johns Hopkins</a>: The STEM project
	also collaborates with the <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/">Johns
	Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health</a>, where we work with
	Epidemiology Ph.D., Graduate Student Justin Lesler on the validation
	of the mathematics of our disease models. (Full Disclosure: IBM pays
	Justin Lessler for this work). </p></li>

	<li><p><a href="www.mit.edu>">MIT</a>: STEM has an ongoing
	collaboration with Professor Dick Larson, in the <a
	href="http://www.mit.edu/~orc/">Operations Research Department</a> at
	MIT for the development of advanced disease models.</p></li>

	<li><p><a href="http://www.mecids.org/index.php"> Middle East
	Consortium for Infectious Disease Surveillance</a> (MECIDS): An
	organization supported by the <a
	href="http://www.nti.org/index.php">Nuclear Threat Initiative</a>
	(NTI) and <a href="http://www.sfcg.org/">Search for Common Ground</a>,
	which includes the public health departments of <a
	href="http://www.health.gov.il/english/"> Israeli<a>, <a
	href="http://www.moh.gov.jo/MOH/En/home.php">Jordan</a>, and <a
	href="http://www.moh.gov.ps/">Palestinian</a>. As well as <a
	href="http://www.tau.ac.il/index-eng.html"> Tel Aviv University</a>
	and <a href="http://www.alquds.edu/index.php"> Al Quds University
	</a>.

	</p></li>

	<li><p> <a href="http://www.publichealth.pitt.edu/"> University of
	Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health</a> and <a
	href="http://www.medschool.pitt.edu/"> School of Medicine</a>,
	Prof. Burce Lee</p></li>

	</ul>

	<h2>Tentative Plan </h2><p>

	2009-06 V0.4: Base release for Disease modeling
	2009-12 V0.5: Non-disease modeling example application
	2010-06 V0.6: Integrated situational awareness and analytics





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