Math grant to tackle pandemics, malware and blackouts

MANHASSET, NY — The search for a common mathematical framework for complex networks of interactivity, which include the spread of pandemics, malware and blackouts has landed an academic with the Virginia Tech College of Engineering a $750,000 federal grant to come up with generic answer.

Assistant professor Anil Vullikanti is tasked to computer design a unified mathematical framework to prevent future pandemics such as the H1NI flu virus, malware/computer virus attacks, and mass power grid blackouts like the Northeast Blackout of 2003.

"Many of these processes can be viewed as compositions of simpler diffusion processes, and this project is to study these fundamental processes and develop a framework for their compositions," Vullikanti said. Just as sick people can spread their sickness to co-workers and neighbors, computer viruses and power grid failures spread fast and wide by proximity.

The main challenges of the project include the huge variability in the scales and unstructured properties of the kinds of networks that arise and limited real data and models, Vullikanti said. "We will use both theoretical and large scale simulation based methods to address the challenges of complex networks," he added.

The National Science Foundation awards the Career Principal Investigator grant to faculty in the early stages of their academic profession in the fields of applied mathematics, computer science, computational science, and high-performance networks.

The grant is supposed to bolster the nation's scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early career years, when many scientists do their most formative work.