University Times

The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), a joint effort of Pitt, Carnegie Mellon University and Westinghouse Electric Co., has received the 2009 HPCwire Reader’s Choice Award for Top Supercomputing Achievement.

The award recognized PSC’s work as part of the National Institutes of Health’s Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS) project, which supports research to simulate disease spread and evaluate intervention strategies.

HPCwire is a news service for high-performance computing and computational science that serves an international community.

As part of the MIDAS project, PSC scientist Shawn Brown has modeled the spread of the H1N1 virus in various locales, including the United States, the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and Allegheny County.

The project’s modeling helps policymakers and public health officials evaluate the effectiveness of virus mitigation strategies, such as vaccination and school closure.

Brown is collaborating with the Pittsburgh MIDAS Center of Excellence, led by Donald Burke, dean of the Graduate School of Public Health.

This group is studying questions about the behavioral, environmental and evolutionary factors underlying infectious disease epidemics to develop real-time models for particular localities, cities and states.