MIDAS Coordination Center - Year 6-10

PROJECT SUMMARY For nearly 20 years, the Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS) research network has been an active community of infectious disease modeling researchers. The opening of the MIDAS to the broader community and the COVID-19 pandemic spurred an intense increase in interest, with membership growing from 152 researchers in 2019 to more than 1000 in 2023. Since 2019, the MIDAS Coordination Center (MCC) led by the University of Pittsburgh has worked to support the community. The MCC has provided the community with resources in support of ID modeling, through a FAIR catalog of infectious disease modeling resources, including a curated archive of COVID data as provided by public health agencies, and through the creation of more than 200 COVID-19 and Mpox datasets in the standards-compliant Project Tycho data format. Community support efforts included an active website; special-interest groups for Latin-American researchers and students; support for the COVID-19 and Flu Scenario Modeling Hubs; monthly webinars; and events including the Workshop to Increase Diversity in Mathematical Modeling and Public Health and the MIDAS annual meeting. To increase the rigor of modeling efforts, the MCC team developed and validated a checklist for information needed to ensure the reproducibility of infectious disease modeling efforts. In the next phase of the MCC, leading modelers from the University of Virginia, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the University of Maryland will join forces with the team at the University of Pittsburgh to expand the community focus of the MIDAS network and promote further advances in modeling research. The new MCC will: 1) develop a community- focused process to extend the MIDAS catalog with software, educational, and modeling results resources; 2) Expand the collection of Tycho-formatted gold standard datasets and related data; 3) Organize community-based activities, including workshops, working groups, educational activities and challenges; 4) Train the next generation of infectious disease researchers; 5) organize coordination and outreach activities, including efforts aimed at engaging with public health officials, mapping of community activities; hosting monthly webinars; and planning an annual meeting; and 6) conduct novel research into the development of model description frameworks and taxonomies in support of rigorous evaluation of modeling approaches. A focus on responsiveness to community-needs will ensure the relevance and impact of MCC efforts.