David Hess, Isaiah Hoyer, Himanshu Neema, Mike Reddy

The Premonition Biological Weather Station is based on unique sensor devices that can identify a wide range of insects and other arthropods and selectively trapping them for analysis. The analysis screens all molecular material of a mosquito sample including pathogens within a mosquito, host DNA of a bloodmeal if the mosquito recently fed, the pathogens within the host blood of the mosquito bloodmeal, and the overall microbiome of a mosquito.

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Jordan Hoffman, Ilinca Ciubotariu, Limonty Simubali, Twig Mudenda, William Moss, Giovanna Carpi, Douglas Norris, Jennifer Stevenson

Despite dramatic reductions in malaria cases in the catchment area of Macha Hospital, Choma District, Southern Province in Zambia, prevalence has remained near 1–2% by RDT for the past several years. To investigate residual malaria transmission in the area, this study focuses on the relative abundance, foraging behavior, and phylogenetic relationships of Anopheles squamosus specimens. In 2011, higher than expected rates of anthropophily were observed among “zoophilic” An.

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Coyne Drummond, Mary Gebhardt, Maria Sáenz-Robles, Giovanna Carpi, Isaiah Hoyer, Andrzej Pastusiak, Michael Reddy, Douglas Norris, James Pipas, Ethan Jackson

Monitoring the presence and spread of pathogens in the environment is of critical importance. Rapid detection of infectious disease outbreaks and prediction of their spread can facilitate early responses of health agencies and reduce the severity of outbreaks. Current sampling methods are sorely limited by available personnel and throughput. For instance, xenosurveillance utilizes captured arthropod vectors, such as mosquitoes, as sampling tools to access blood from a wide variety of vertebrate hosts.

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Ilinca Ciubotariu, Christine Jones, Tamaki Kobayashi, Thierry Bobanga, Mbanga Muleba, Julia Pringle, Jennifer Stevenson, Giovanna Carpi, Douglas Norris

Despite ongoing malaria control efforts implemented throughout sub-Saharan Africa, malaria remains an enormous public health concern. Current interventions such as indoor residual spraying with insecticides and use of insecticide-treated bed nets are aimed at targeting the key malaria vectors that are primarily endophagic and endophilic. Anopheles coustani s.l., an understudied vector of malaria, is a species previously thought to exhibit mostly zoophilic behavior. Like many of these understudied species, An.

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Coyne Drummond, Mary Gebhardt, Maria Sáenz-Robles, Giovanna Carpi, Isaiah Hoyer, Andrzej Pastusiak, Michael Reddy, Douglas Norris, James Pipas, Ethan Jackson

Monitoring the presence and spread of pathogens in the environment is of critical importance. Rapid detection of infectious disease outbreaks and prediction of their spread can facilitate early responses of health agencies and reduce the severity of outbreaks. Current sampling methods are sorely limited by available personnel and throughput. For instance, xenosurveillance utilizes captured arthropod vectors, such as mosquitoes, as sampling tools to access blood from a wide variety of vertebrate hosts.

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Himanshu Neema, Janos Sztipanovits, Cornelius Steinbrink, Thomas Raub, Bastian Cornelsen, Sebastian Lehnhoff

Simulation-based analysis is essential in the model-based design process of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Since heterogeneity is inherent to CPS, virtual prototyping of CPS designs and the simulation of their behavior in various environments typically involve a number of physical and computation/communication domains interacting with each other. Affordability of the model-based design process makes the use of existing domain-specific modeling and simulation tools all but mandatory.

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Alex Perkins, Robert Reiner, Guido España, Quirine Bosch, Amit Verma, Kelly Liebman, Valerie Paz-Soldan, John Elder, Amy Morrison, Steven Stoddard, Uriel Kitron, Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, Thomas Scott, David Smith

Prophylactic vaccination is a powerful tool for reducing the burden of infectious diseases, due to a combination of direct protection of vaccinees and indirect protection of others via herd immunity. Computational models play an important role in devising strategies for vaccination by making projections of its impacts on public health. Such projections are subject to uncertainty about numerous factors, however.

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Hasan Al-Amin, Mohammad Kafi, Sumit Chakma, Abu Mohon, Wasif Khan, Rashidul Haque, David Sullivan, Douglas Norris, Mohammad Alam

Anopheles jeyporiensis and Anopheles nivipes appear to play an important role in contemporary malaria transmission in Bangladesh. However, very little is known about the natural host selection of these vectors. Therefore, host selection of these two species was investigated in Bandarban, the most malarious region of Bangladesh. A total of 480 engorged mosquitoes were analyzed. The human blood index (HBI) of An. jeyporiensis varied from 4.17% in outdoor to 19.17% in indoor collections. Similarly, HBI of An.

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Marisa Hast, Jennifer Stevenson, Mbanga Muleba, Mike Chaponda, Kabuya Bukasa, Modest Mulenga, Justin Lessler, Timothy Shields, William Moss, Douglas Norris

Malaria transmission is dependent on the density and distribution of mosquito vectors, but drivers of vector abundance have not been adequately studied across a range of transmission settings. To inform intervention strategies for high-burden areas, further investigation is needed to identify predictors of vector abundance. Active household (HH) surveillance was conducted in Nchelenge district, Luapula Province, northern Zambia, a high-transmission setting with limited impact of malaria control.

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Connie Xu, Paul Cantalupo, Maria Sáenz-Robles, Amy Baldwin, Dan Fitzpatrick, Douglas Norris, Ethan Jackson, James Pipas

We present a draft genome of a novel rhabdovirus, called Grenada mosquito rhabdovirus 1 (GMRV1), with homology to Wuhan mosquito virus 9 (WMV9) (NCBI reference sequence NC_031303), isolated from Deinocerites mosquitoes. The genome has a length of 14,420 nucleotides and encodes five open reading frames.

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Coyne Drummond, Mary Gebhardt, Maria Sáenz-Robles, Giovanna Carpi, Isaiah Hoyer, Andrzej Pastusiak, Michael Reddy, Douglas Norris, James Pipas, Ethan Jackson

Monitoring the presence and spread of pathogens in the environment is of critical importance. Rapid detection of infectious disease outbreaks and prediction of their spread can facilitate early responses of health agencies and reduce the severity of outbreaks. Current sampling methods are sorely limited by available personnel and throughput. For instance, xenosurveillance utilizes captured arthropod vectors, such as mosquitoes, as sampling tools to access blood from a wide variety of vertebrate hosts.

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Connie Xu, Paul Cantalupo, Maria Sáenz-Robles, Amy Baldwin, Dan Fitzpatrick, Douglas Norris, Ethan Jackson, James Pipas

We present a draft genome of a novel rhabdovirus, called Grenada mosquito rhabdovirus 1 (GMRV1), with homology to Wuhan mosquito virus 9 (WMV9) (NCBI reference sequence NC_031303), isolated from Deinocerites mosquitoes. The genome has a length of 14,420 nucleotides and encodes five open reading frames.

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Anna Bershteyn, Jaline Gerardin, Daniel Bridenbecker, Christopher Lorton, Jonathan Bloedow, Robert Baker, Guillaume Chabot-Couture, Ye Chen, Thomas Fischle, Kurt Frey, Jillian Gauld, Hao Hu, Amanda Izzo, Daniel Klein, Dejan Lukacevic, Kevin McCarthy, Joel Miller, Andre Ouedraogo, Alex Perkins, Jeffrey Steinkraus, Quirine Bosch, Hung-Fu Ting, Svetlana Titova, Bradley Wagner, Philip Welkhoff, Edward Wenger, Christian Wiswell

Individual-based models provide modularity and structural flexibility necessary for modeling of infectious diseases at the within-host and population levels, but are challenging to implement. Levels of complexity can exceed the capacity and timescales for students and trainees in most academic institutions. Here we describe the process and advantages of a multi-disease framework approach developed with formal software support. The epidemiological modeling software, EMOD, has undergone a decade of software development.

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Luis Villegas, Thais Campolina, Nilton Barnabe, Alessandra Orfano, Barbara Chaves, Douglas Norris, Paulo Pimenta, Nagila Secundino

Zika is a re-emerging infection that has been considered a major threat to global public health. Currently at least 100 countries are at risk of Zika virus (ZIKV) transmission. Aedes aegypti is the main mosquito vector in the Americas. This vector is exposed to, and interacts symbiotically with a variety of microorganisms in its environment, which may result in the formation of a lifetime association. Here, the unknown effect that ZIKV exerts on the dynamic bacterial community harbored by this mosquito vector was investigated using a metagenomic analysis of its microbiota. Groups of Ae.

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Christine Jones, Yoosook Lee, Andrew Kitchen, Travis Collier, Julia Pringle, Mbanga Muleba, Seth Irish, Jennifer Stevenson, Maureen Coetzee, Anthony Cornel, Douglas Norris, Giovanna Carpi

Anopheles funestus s.s. is a primary vector of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite its important role in human Plasmodium transmission, evolutionary history, genetic diversity, and population structure of An. funestus in southern and central Africa remains understudied. We deep sequenced, assembled, and annotated the complete mitochondrial genome of An. funestus s.s. for the first time, providing a foundation for further genetic research of this important malaria vector species.

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Connie Xu, Paul Cantalupo, Maria Sáenz-Robles, Amy Baldwin, Dan Fitzpatrick, Douglas Norris, Ethan Jackson, James Pipas

We present a draft genome of a novel rhabdovirus, called Grenada mosquito rhabdovirus 1 (GMRV1), with homology to Wuhan mosquito virus 9 (WMV9) (NCBI reference sequence NC_031303), isolated from Deinocerites mosquitoes. The genome has a length of 14,420 nucleotides and encodes five open reading frames.

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Brian Broll, Jimmy Whitaker

In this paper we introduce DeepForge, a platform for deep learning designed to lower the barrier to entry and facilitate the rapid development of deep learning models while maintaining a high degree of transparency and interoperability. Utilizing a cloud-based infrastructure, DeepForge facilitates rapid development by promoting reproducibility, collaboration and remote execution of machine learning pipelines.

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Moritz Kraemer, Nuno Faria, Robert Reiner, Nick Golding, Birgit Nikolay, Stephanie Stasse, Michael Johannson, Henrik Salje, Ousmane Faye, G Wint, Matthias Niedrig, Freya Shearer, Sarah Hill, Robin Thompson, Donal Bisanzio, Nuno Taveira, Heinrich Nax, Bary Pradelski, Simon Cauchemez

Background Since late 2015, an epidemic of yellow fever has caused more than 7334 suspected cases in Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, including 393 deaths. We sought to understand the spatial spread of this outbreak to optimise the use of the limited available vaccine stock.

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Smita Das, Mbanga Muleba, Jennifer Stevenson, Julia Pringle, Douglas Norris

A commonly used measure of malaria transmission intensity is the entomological inoculation rate (EIR), defined as the product of the human biting rate (HBR) and sporozoite infection rate (SIR). The EIR excludes molecular parameters that may influence vector control and surveillance strategies. The purpose of this study was to investigate Anopheles multiple blood feeding behavior (MBF) and Plasmodium falciparum multiplicity of infection (MOI) within the mosquito host in Nchelenge District, northern Zambia.

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As the hot, humid weather descended on Houston's Harris County this spring, the county's mosquito surveillance team geared up for the busiest season in its fight to get ahead of dangerous mosquito-borne illnesses such as Zika. This year, however, the team had a new weapon in its toolkit: A sleek-looking mosquito trap that experts say marks the biggest innovation in trap technology in decades. "It's really 1,000 times better," said Mustapha Debboun, the director of Harris County Public Health's mosquito control division.

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Robert Reiner, Alex Perkins, Christopher Barker, Tianchan Niu, Luis Chaves, Alicia Ellis, Dylan George, Arnaud Le Menach, Juliet Pulliam, Donal Bisanzio, Caroline Buckee, Christinah Chiyaka, Derek Cummings, Andres Garcia, Michelle Gatton, Peter Gething, David Hartley, Geoffrey Johnston, Eili Klein, Edwin Michael, Steven Lindsay, Alun Lloyd, David Pigott, William Reisen, Nick Ruktanonchai, Brajendra Singh, Andrew Tatem, Uriel Kitron, Simon Hay, Thomas Scott, David Smith

Mathematical models of mosquito-borne pathogen transmission originated in the early twentieth century to provide insights into how to most effectively combat malaria. The foundations of the Ross–Macdonald theory were established by 1970. Since then, there has been a growing interest in reducing the public health burden of mosquito-borne pathogens and an expanding use of models to guide their control.

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David Smith, Katherine Battle, Simon Hay, Christopher Barker, Thomas Scott, Ellis McKenzie

Ronald Ross and George Macdonald are credited with developing a mathematical model of mosquito-borne pathogen transmission. A systematic historical review suggests that several mathematicians and scientists contributed to development of the Ross-Macdonald model over a period of 70 years. Ross developed two different mathematical models, Macdonald a third, and various “Ross-Macdonald” mathematical models exist. Ross-Macdonald models are best defined by a consensus set of assumptions.

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