MIDAS: The strengths of a network

When a journalist from Vogue magazine called the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) in 2006 looking for a trailblazer scientist for a feature article, Betz Halloran was the first name out of the hat. M. Elizabeth (Betz) Halloran, professor of biostatistics at the University of Washington, Seattle, and a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, is an internationally recognized scientist in the study of infectious disease and at the forefront of national efforts to thwart a flu pandemic. She is also a member of the Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS) group that unites research and informatics groups to develop computational models for pandemic influenza.

Says Halloran: “We had been collaborating with Stephen Eubank at VBI, and Don Burke at the Center for Vaccine Research at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as a few others, before MIDAS hit the ground running. But having the MIDAS network has helped to strengthen these collaborations and open up new opportunities for pandemic influenza research.”

The main achievements of MIDAS to date, says Halloran, include developing a number of approaches for modeling pandemic influenza, bringing attention to the need for more data-driven computer models, and developing a rapport with public health officials on containment and mitigation strategies.

The hard work is paying off. MIDAS published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in March 2008 describing the modeling of a large-scale influenza pandemic in Chicago. The study received considerable interest from the public health, decision-making, and scientific communities as well as extensive media coverage.

Halloran says, “One of the challenges we all face as researchers is to maintain an exciting scientific research program within the MIDAS group and, at the same time, respond to the immediate needs of the public health community and high-level decision-makers. This challenge will continue to shape our efforts as we move ahead in evaluating best practices and strategies for pandemic flu intervention.”

Betz Halloran