Mentor(s): Dr. Andreas Handel group (http://handelgroup.uga.edu/)
Abstract: A challenge study is a type of trial where patients are intentionally infected with a pathogen. Norovirus, everyone’s favorite cruise ship disease, has been studied in several challenge trials in the past, since its symptoms are relatively mild, and it is difficult to grow in the lab outside of live animals. While certain norovirus challenge studies are widely cited, there is no consensus among experts of exactly how many norovirus challenge studies have been conducted. We will review the published literature to find all previously published challenge studies, and where possible, extract the data from these studies in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of how many norovirus challenge trials have been conducted and what information they have provided.
Is the project computational, empirical, or both? This project is computational and will use the R programming language where necessary. We do not expect this project to be programming intensive.