AAAS 2017 Annual Meeting AMA Series: Hi, I’m Ethan Jackson of Microsoft Research, and I lead Project PREMONITION, which uses emerging technologies to detect, and help thwart, epidemics. Recently, we developed a trap to catch mosquitos that could track spread of Zika. Ask me anything!

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Hi reddit! Emerging infectious diseases (e.g., SARS, MERS, Ebola, and Zika) pose significant human health, economic, and security risks. Advances in engineering and computing technologies can be effectively used to mitigate or reduce the effect of such outbreaks.

I’m Ethan Jackson a researcher in The Research in Software Engineering (RiSE) Group at Microsoft Research, and I lead Project Premonition, which aims to achieve early detection before a disease outbreak by collecting and analyzing blood samples obtained from mosquitoes at scale. In other words, we built a better mosquito trap!

My project employs drones, robotic mosquito traps, and metagenomics to find, collect, and analyze mosquitoes for both known and unknown viruses. Specifically we are: (1) autonomously obtaining blood samples from animal populations via robotically-collected wild-caught mosquitoes, (2) applying high-throughput gene sequencing (NGS) to convert samples into metagenomic data, and then (3) using cloud-scale computational genomics to extract potential threats. By collecting big data on mosquito behavior we hope to better inform epidemiological models and public health organizations.

I'll be back at 1 pm to answer your questions, ask me anything!

">AAAS 2017 Annual Meeting AMA Series: Hi, I’m Ethan Jackson of Microsoft Research, and I lead Project PREMONITION, which uses emerging technologies to detect, and help thwart, epidemics. Recently, we developed a trap to catch mosquitos that could track spread of Zika. Ask me anything!