You are here

E-MEME: Epidemiological Modeling of the Evolution of MEssages

Award Information
Agency: Department of Defense
Branch: Navy
Contract: N00014-09-M-0189
Agency Tracking Number: O072-CR1-8015
Amount: $100,000.00
Phase: Phase I
Program: SBIR
Solicitation Topic Code: OSD07-CR1
Solicitation Number: 2007.2
Timeline
Solicitation Year: 2007
Award Year: 2009
Award Start Date (Proposal Award Date): 2009-03-02
Award End Date (Contract End Date): 2010-03-01
Small Business Information
12 Gill Street Suite 1400
Woburn, MA 01801
United States
DUNS: 967259946
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No
Principal Investigator
 Robert McCormack
 Applied Mathematician
 (781) 496-2476
 rmccormack@aptima.com
Business Contact
 Margaret Clancy
Title: Chief Financial Officer
Phone: (781) 496-2415
Email: clancy@aptima.com
Research Institution
N/A
Abstract

Unofficial means of communication, such as internet blogs and forums and word-of-mouth contacts, provide an ideal medium for the spread of ideas within a society. While many of these topics are benign or even beneficial to the population, there are messages which have dangerous and destructive consequences, such as calls for terrorist attacks. The spread of information within a population is in many ways analogous to the spread of disease. The field of mathematical epidemiology provides a vast array of models which can be modified for the current problem. In order to better analyze the dynamics of information propagation, we propose to build the Epidemiological Modeling of the Evolution of MEssages (E-MEME) tool. E-MEME combines statistical language processing technologies to discover latent topics found in website text with epidemiological modeling techniques to understand and predict the means by which messages propagate. E-MEME will give users the ability to analyze the diffusion of topics across internet websites.

* Information listed above is at the time of submission. *

US Flag An Official Website of the United States Government