John Hessler: "To Save Lives: An Introduction to GeoAI and the Modern Mapping of Infectious Diseases”

Sponsored in partnership with California, Chicago, New York, Philip Lee Phillips, Rocky Mountain, and Texas Map Societies.

Location: Zoom

Date: February 11, 2027

Time:  7:00 PM ET/ 6:00 PM CT/ 5:00 PM MT/ 4:00 PM PT

Title: “To Save Lives: An Introduction to GeoAI and the Modern Mapping of Infectious Diseases”

Speaker: John Hessler, founder and director of BIOMAP AI; retired cartographic specialist, Library of Congress Geography and Map Division

Summary: This talk will introduce listeners to the many newly developed methods in GeoAI (Geospatial Artificial Intelligence), which are being used to study, map and model the spread of infectious diseases around the globe. The talk will center on methods currently being applied to highly pathogenic avian flu and to the recent Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that have been developed at BIOMAP AI.  The research is centered on the new use of wavelet and non-linear approximation methods to study and map the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, on tracing the spatial evolution of highly pathogenic avian H5N1 influenza in migratory wild bird populations and on mapping the changes and mutations in the Ebola genome in the current outbreak of Bundibugyo Ebola virus outbreak and the distribution of old world fruit bats, in the Democratic Republic.

Bio: John Hessler is an applied mathematician, geographic information systems (GIS) scientist and former professor at Johns Hopkins University. He currently teaches courses in the theoretical and algorithmic foundations of GIS and the mathematics of deep and machine learning at University College London, and at Sorbonne Université – Campus Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris. He is the founder and director of BIOMAP AI , where we use bioinformatic and genomicdata, machine learning, and advanced geographic information systems, to study the stochastic non-stationary transmission and risk of zoonotic disease outbreaks, along with the movement and migration patterns of their animal hosts. BIOMAP AI works and partners with government and NGO based agencies, like World Health Organization’s GIS Center for Health, researching complex problems in spatial epidemiology, accessing the risk of infectious disease outbreaks, and modeling geographic uncertainty, to help save lives and to reduce economic impacts.

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