Informatics-Driven Infectious Disease Research

Informatics-driven approaches change how research and development are conducted, who participates, and enables systems-oriented views of science and research. Most life sciences researchers have a very strong desire for the full integration of data and analysis tools delivered through a single interface. Infectious disease (ID) research and development provides a uniquely challenging and high impact opportunity. The biological complexity of infectious disease systems, which are composed of multiple scales of interactions between potential pathogens, hosts, vectors, and the environment, challenges information resources because of the breadth of organism-organism and organism-environment interactions. Applications of integrated data for ID serves a variety of constituencies, such as clinicians, diagnostician, drug and vaccine developers, and epidemiologists. Thus there is a complexity that makes ID an opportune area in which to develop, deploy and use CyberInfrastructure.