The University of Vermont's Department fo Computer Science recently received major funding for two research projects.
Predicting Livestock Disease Transmission Dynamics under Alternate Biosecurity Risk Management Interventions and Behavioral Responses of Livestock Producers
- USDA award
- Principal Investigator: Asim Zia; co-Principal Investigators: Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, Nick Cheney)
- Amount: $2.47M
- Duration: 5 years
- Summary: Disease risk in livestocks depends on the extent to which producers can adopt biosecurity measures as well as the ability of governmental agencies to anticipate and control the diffusion of pathogens. This project addresses a fundamental challenge posed by the lack of integrated models of pathogen introduction, diffusion dynamics, and behavior of livestock producers. This project aims to advance this transdisciplinary convergence by developing a novel agent-based model of livestock production to predict pathogen transmission dynamics under adaptive and heterogeneous risk management interventions and behaviors.
Leveraging AI to Guard Online Open Source Networks (LAGOON)
- DARPA award
- Principal Investigators: David Darais, Galois; UVM co-Principal Investigators: Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, Nick Cheney, James Bagrow)
- Amount: $500k
- Duration: 9 months
- Summary: The LAGOON project looks at the social-cyber-security of open source projects. The aim is to measure how toxicity and harassment in online software communities can lead to disengagement of maintainers and even security issues in the software itself. In doing so, LAGOON builds on known theories from the science of organizations but add important layers of data science, social network analysis and cybersecurity expertise to develop new tools specific to large open source projects.