CADMS Home Page
Center for Animal Disease Modeling and Surveillance (CADMS)
In recent years, emergence of exotic and foreign animal diseases has been recognized as a major threat to animal agriculture, public health and the economy. Many of these diseases are not present in the United States and thus must be studied using mathematical or statistical models to simulate natural disease conditions. As a result, the Center for Animal Disease Modeling and Surveillance (CADMS), a part of the Department of Veterinary Medicine & Epidemiology, School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis, was established in 2004 to provide a coordinated, multidisciplinary, on-going research effort to develop models and modeling systems in the area of animal disease. Currently, we have approximately 25 personnel including: faculty, analysts, programmers, veterinarians, administrative staff, graduate students, and undergraduate students from 10 countries working at the Center. We moved to our current site at 1044 Haring Hall, on the UC Davis campus, in January of 2008.
Our overarching goal is to develop systems that can be used to prevent, control, or eradicate animal diseases and their associated adverse economic impacts. CADMS serves as a core research program to provide a focus for all faculty interested in animal disease modeling (including mathematical and simulation modeling and risk analysis) and surveillance research. Current focus is on foot-and-mouth-disease (FMD), avian influenza (AI), and toxoplasmosis. Our program also includes training and education for graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and visiting scholars interested in related research projects. Current UCD faculty members are from the Department of Medicine & Epidemiology, the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and the Department of Statistics.
CADMS is made up of two research groups
- The FMD Laboratory
led by Drs. Mark Thurmond and Andres Perez - The Animal Disease Modeling Lab (ADM)
led by Dr. Tim Carpenter.
CADMS Objectives
- Develop surveillance systems and models to detect the presence of and to predict risk of selected animal diseases throughout the world.
- Model the global spread of selected animal diseases, including the risk of the disease entering the US.
- Model the spread and control of diseases that are currently endemic in the US.
- Predict the spread of and evaluate alternative strategies for disease mitigation for selected animal diseases if they were to enter the US.
- Train and educate graduate students in advanced statistical, epidemiologic, and modeling techniques.
- Provide information to federal and state agencies, commodity representatives and industry stakeholders on the potential spread of disease and participate in policy and strategy discussions on the prevention, control and eradication of disease.