Funding:

Design Phase (These are two grants for the design phase. We have two design phases, Survey, and modeling.)

1. NIH Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant Award (R21) https://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/r21.htm. This grant is a beginning grant for initial stages of research. We already have an NIH grant for our project, but it’s focused more on the original project with modeling bat movement. If we were to apply to this grant we would have more resources for our project to look into how we are building our survey. We would apply for it with logic using this grant to hire some professional help with the development of the survey. We need a good survey for the rest of our project to work, so professional help could improve the accuracy of our data and overall improve our project.
2. NSF Computational and Data-Enabled Science and Engineering (CDS&E). This is a grant focused on developing models and conducting research into modeling. We would write a proposal targeting this grant from a modeling perspective. Our project once the survey is completed and the data collected we need to create a model to implement the data into. This is sort of our second phase of development of the project, but fortunately, we can borrow the model from our bat project to accomplish the beginning of the modeling. We have made a lot of progress in this area, but we need money to run simulations and buy time with computing power, which would be the use of this grant.

Dissemination Phase (This first grant targets collecting data in Sierra Leone, the second is for growing the surveying into other countries and other diseases)

1. NIH Modeling of Infectious Disease Agent Study Research Projects (R01) https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/pa-16-107.html. This grant is focused on infectious diseases. We would write a proposal for this grant focusing on how our project has the potential to model the transmission of Ebola, which is an infectious disease. We would also probably add that if we get our model to work we can adapt it to other infectious diseases. Thus, the NIH would be more likely to approve our proposal. We would use this money to hire people in Sierre Leone to collect data and survey people while we are not there. This data is valuable to the NIH as raw data and is necessary for us to model the spread of Ebola
2. CDC 2019 Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Prevention and Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases (ELC). This grant is focused on the spread of disease worldwide. We would write a proposal to receive funding once we have completed the data collection and modeling, we would hope to start adding data from other countries, factors, and diseases into our model. We would use this grant to that by making new surveys, collecting new data, and improve the model with these new diseases by testing.

 

Partnerships

1. CDC: We need to form a relationship with the CDC because they have experts that have a great understanding of Ebola. They also were on the ground in 2014 during the last outbreak, so they have an understanding of how the disease spread in humans which can help us better understand how the disease transmits from bats to humans. The experts who do what we are trying to do for a living who can give us advice. Finally, they have a lot of data from the 2014 epidemic which can use to train our model and better understand what is going on. Overall the CDC has so much human capital that we could use to further our project. The CDC has a mission to understand the disease and find methods to better control and understand disease, which we are doing so our interest align.
2. NIH: The NIH has a lot of grant capability and also has a large research network we can rely on. Our relationship with NIH would be similar to our relationship with the CDC. They have experts, first-hand experience with Ebola, and data from the epidemics from before. There reach and network of researchers can allow us to connect with and improve our model. The NIH literally has tons of people who are doing what are doing that we can help, and that can help us. Take as much help as you can get. The NIH mission is to study health across the world, so if we are doing that, which we are they are incentives to work with us.
3. WorldHope: Obisoiuvly we have a relationship with world Hope through Khanjan, but we need to establish a better relationship with them so in the future, we can have them possibly conduct our surveys for us while we are not in the country. We also can use them as a base to get transportation, translators, and a place to work, which are key resources we need in order to gather our data. WH will want to work with us because we have money and human capital that they desperately need.
4. Statistics Sierra Leone: We would like to establish a relationship with statistics SaLeone to hopefully have them collect our data using our survey while we are not there. If World hope won’t or can’t play a part in the collection of the data Statistics can because they are already doing what we are trying to do, so we just need to convince them to do it with our survey. We just have to find the right motivation for them to do this for us. We can provide them with some capital resources to encourage them to work with us.
5. UNSD (United Nations Statistics): The UNSD can provide us with connections to statistics beuaras across Africa. Ebola is really only found in Africa. We want to grow our model as much as we can, so we need someone who makes all the right connections and has a global reach. UNSD can make these connections to allow our model to grow and allow us to collect data in more countries to improve our model. I am not really sure why the UNSD would want to work with us other than to collect data that can be valuable to the world.