Project Team

	Paolo Bocchini, PhD Professor and Director of Graduate Programs Department of Civil Environmental Engineering Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA Website: www.paolobocchini.com
	Javier Buceta, PhD Professor Institute for Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio) UV-CSIC, Valencia, Spain Website: www.thesimbiosys.com
	Lidia Contresas Postdoctoral Scholar Institute for Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio) UV-CSIC, Valencia, Spain
	Yanyan Chen Former Doctoral Student Department of Bioengineering Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA
	Sena Mursel Doctoral Student Department of Civil Environmental Engineering Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA
	Nathaniel Alter Former Undergraduate Student Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA
	Lindsay Slavit Former Undergraduate Student Department of Bioengineering Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA
	Anna Smith Former Undergraduate Student Department of Material Science and Engineering Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA

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Publications

	Sena Mursel, Daniel Conus, Wei-Min Huang, Javier Buceta, Paolo Bocchini. Random field calibration for the bare carrying capacity of bats in Africa. Under review.
	Sena Mursel, Nathaniel Alter, Lindsay Slavit, Anna Smith, Paolo Bocchini, Javier Buceta. Estimation of Ebola's spillover infection exposure in Sierra Leone based on sociodemographic and economic factors . PLOS ONE, Accepted for publication, 2022.
	Sena Mursel, Daniel Conus, Wei-Min Huang, Javier Buceta, Paolo Bocchini. Random Field Calibration with Data on Irregular Grid for Regional Analyses. In Proceedings of the 2022 Conference of the Engineering Mechanics Institute, ASCE, p. 445, 2022.
	Yanyan Chen, Javier Buceta. A non-linear analysis of Turing pattern formation. PLOS ONE, Vol. 14, Issue 8, Article e0220994, p. 1-9, 2019. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-26074-4
	Nathaniel Alter, Paolo Bocchini, Javier Buceta. Predicting Ebola outbreaks (while my guitar gently weeps). Atlas of Science, October 2019.
	Graziano Fiorillo, Paolo Bocchini, Javier Buceta. A predictive spatial distribution framework for filovirus-infected fruit bats. Scientific Reports, Nature, Vol. 8, Article 7970, p. 1-13, 2018. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-26074-4
	Graziano Fiorillo, Vasileios Christou, Amirali Shojaeian, Paolo Bocchini, Javier Buceta, Manuel J. Miranda. Comparison of clustering strategies for the functional quantization of random functions. In Safety, Reliability, Risk, Resilience and Sustainability of Structures and Infrastructure (C. Bucher, B.R. Ellingwood, D.M. Frangopol eds.), pp. 1327-1336, 2017.

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Data

	Sena Mursel, Nathaniel Alter, Lindsay Slavit, Anna Smith, Paolo Bocchini, Javier Buceta. Ebola and SDE Factors. Data collected through a survey in Sierra Leone. September 2021
	Graziano Fiorillo, Paolo Bocchini, Javier Buceta. A Predictive Spatial Distribution Framework for Filovirus-Infected Fruit Bats. Datasets and code to calibrate a model of the bat carrying capacity in Africa. DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.5633425.v2 November 2017

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Preprints

	Sena Mursel, Daniel Conus, Wei-Min Huang, Javier Buceta, Paolo Bocchini. Random field calibration for the bare carrying capacity of bats in Africa. Pre-print available online at OSF, https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/b8nx4. Pre-print DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/b8nx4
	Sena Mursel, Nathaniel Alter, Lindsay Slavit, Anna Smith, Paolo Bocchini, Javier Buceta. Estimation of Ebola's spillover infection exposure in Sierra Leone based on sociodemographic and economic factors . Pre-print available online at arXiv, https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.15313. arXiv identifier: arXiv:2109.15313

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In the News

PAREO was featured in several news outlets, as main focus or as part of the initiatives of the Catastrophe Modeling Center at Lehigh University. These are just a few, selected, news items.

	Paolo Bocchini and Javier Buceta: Shining a stochastic spotlight on Ebola. Resolve, Lehigh University.
	Lehigh University researchers track bats to predict next Ebola outbreak. The Morning Call.
	Could we predict the next Ebola outbreak by tracking the migratory patterns of bats?. Science Daily.
	Can bats 'tell us' when and where Ebola will strike next?. Medical News Today.
	Lehigh researchers enlist bats to predict Ebola outbreaks. Radio WHYY - PBS - NPR.
	A Sharper Focus on Catastrophe Modeling. Lehigh Research Review.

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Mountaintop - Creative Inquiry - GSIF

As part of the project, the team collaborated with the Office of Creative Inquiry, the Mountaintop Initiative, and the Global Social Impact Fellowship to recruit talented undergraduate students and expose them to this field of research. Being part of these initiatives allowed us to present our research not only to the three undergraduate students directly involved, but to the entire cohort of Lehigh undergraduates participating in these activities and in the various associated events (see for instance, the photo above, taken at the Lehigh EXPO).

These programs provided additional funding and logistic support for the data collection in Sierra Leone, and for other activities intertwined with the project. For instance, the news article for general audience "Predicting Ebola outbreaks (while my guitar gently weeps)" was a direct outcome of the Mountainto Experience.

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Sierra Leone

In 2019 a team led by Drs. Bocchini and Buceta that included three undergraduate students travelled to Sierra Leone to perform a pilot data collection on social, cultural, economic and demogrphic (SCED) factors and behaviors that expose to Ebola spillover from animal hosts. Before departure, the team prepared the survey instrument in collaboration with social scientists and experts of Sierra Leonean culture. We also secured the IRB approval and planned the logistics for the administration. Once on site, we had the survey translated in Krio, the most popular dialect, and we hired two interpreters that accompanied two teams to conduct the survey. Over three weeks, we interviewed almost 300 people spread over one of the 16 districts in the country, covering an area of approximately 10,000 km2 and we published the collected raw and cleaned data. Even more importantly, we used that trip to start a dialogue and collaboration with Statistics Sierra Leone (Stats SL), which is the local census bureau. The results of the survey and the associated models are presented in a manuscript accepted for publication in PLOS ONE.

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Last update:

August 2022