The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has awarded Northwestern $1.7 million in funding as part of a multi-institutional disease outbreak response, NU announced Tuesday.

Northwestern will join as one of 13 funded institutions within a $27.5 million network. The effort, led by the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, will aim to establish a network to support decision-makers during public health emergencies, according to a Tuesday news release.

“Each of the grantees will help us move the nation forward in our efforts to better prepare and respond to infectious disease outbreaks that threaten our families and our communities,” Dylan George, director of the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, said in the release.

According to the release, the network will prioritize three goals over the next five years: developing new approaches to outbreak response, piloting promising ones and scaling successful pilot projects to be used in various places.

McCormick Prof. David Morton will work on optimizing mitigation strategies and developing adaptive warning systems, according to the release. Morton is a member of the UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium and an external project leader of the UT Center for Pandemic Decision Science.

“By using — and collaboratively advancing — our computer models during routine operations, public health officials and emergency responders will be better equipped to employ these technologies during future crises from infectious disease outbreaks,” Morton said.

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Twitter: @jacob_wendler

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