IDM is currently working on disease transmission dynamics for malaria, measles, polio, tuberculosis, HIV, pneumonia, typhoid, COVID-19, and many other diseases. Other areas of study include maternal, newborn, and child health conditions and interventions; health delivery strategies; health system access and effectiveness; family planning interventions; genomic surveillance; pathogen evolution; drug resistance; and other phenomena.

To achieve our goals, we develop deep expertise in the topics we work on and we develop customized high-fidelity and high-performance computer models. Our dedicated software team develops the tools researchers at IDM and our collaborating institutions need to answer policy questions, inform investments, and achieve our long-term research goals. These tools are flexible, fast, and robust. One example is our Epidemiological MODeling (EMOD) software platform, which enables large-scale agent-based models to run on supercomputers, both on premises and in the cloud. This software is open source and is made freely available to the global scientific community.

The control and eradication of infectious diseases is a pressing and complex problem that engages diverse contributors, from health workers on the ground to funding agencies that provide resources and support. Data modeling and statistical analysis make fundamental contributions that inform intervention strategies, resource allocation, and research into the causes and transmission of disease.

Disease modeling benefits the entire global health community by providing new insight into old problems, testing novel combinations of strategies, and enabling the collection of more valuable data in the field. The Institute for Disease Modeling (IDM) grew from a focus on malaria eradication to an institution working on multiple diseases, health care programs, and associated systems within the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Our advancements in modeling provide powerful, state-of-the-art guidance and information for public health workers and institutions around the world.

IDM strongly values collaboration among people with varied backgrounds and skills. One thing that sets IDM apart from other modeling groups is the relationship between our research and software teams. Our researchers work with a dedicated software team that provides extensive professional experience in building, testing, and supporting our modeling tools. By following software best practices, this team can help build modeling tools that are easily extended to model a variety of different diseases and interventions.

We believe collaboration can magnify the impact of our work, so we work to build collaborations with partners worldwide, including universities, nongovernmental organizations, government ministries, and other research and public health institutions to achieve positive, important, and long long-lasting impacts on the health of people most in need.

IDM collaborates with selected universities, NGOs, government ministries, and other research and public health institutions throughout the world. Some of the recent research efforts are in the following areas:

• Polio eradication in Nigeria and Afghanistan
• Malaria transmission in Burkina Faso, Mali, Zambia, and Tanzania
• Tuberculosis in the gold mines of South Africa

If you are interested in collaborating with us, please contact [email protected].