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Economics professor Don Keenan and Pejman Rohani, an assistant
professor with UGA's Institute of Ecology, have been awarded
a $100,000 research grant from the National Science Foundation
for their proposal, "On Long-Term Consequences of Selfish
Behavior: A Game Theoretic Approach to Host-Pathogen Coevolution."
The cross-campus partnership was aided by Matt Bonds, who
completed his Ph.D. in economics from Terry College last year
and is now pursuing a Ph.D. in ecology.
"The collaboration between Pejman, Matt and I began
because of Matt finishing up his Ph.D. degree in economics
and beginning one in ecology, which this project will presumably
constitute," Keenan said. "We think that there should
be much more opportunity for collaborative work between the
two fields of ecology and economics."
NSF's funding of the proposal kicks in this year and lasts
for two academic years. "The grants are quite competitive
and rather prestigious, so I am very pleased that we received
it," Keenan said.
In fact, the National Science Foundation receives about 40,000
competitive requests for funding each year. In the funding
category for which Keenan and Rohani applied, only about 5
percent of the applications are awarded funding. As an independent
federal agency, NSF supports fundamental research and education
across all fields of science and engineering, with an annual
budget exceeding $5.5 billion.
Keenan has a research background in the area of game theory,
which he said was originally developed to study the conscious
interaction of "rational" agents. "For instance,
it would be the preferred economic method for studying how
two firms might compete with one another in the marketplace,"
Keenan said. "There is, however, a newer branch, called
evolutionary game theory, which is useful in biology."
"Our work will apply game theory to the conflict between
that most rational of creatures -- humans -- and the viruses
causing human disease, such as AIDS. While not outwardly rational,
viruses mutate and reproduce with alarming speed," he
said. "By using an explicitly game theoretic framework,
we can simultaneously capture how humans respond to the virulence
of a disease, and how viruses respond to treating a disease.
We are then in a position to design better responses to viral
diseases, applying the full knowledge of what their 'rational'
reaction is likely to be."
"We are further extending this framework to better understand
the interplay between infectious diseases and the evolution
of social behavior in the natural world," said Bonds.
"After all, such diseases are not only the leading killers
of humans worldwide, but they are also major killers of other
social organisms."
The solution technique being applied is the Nash equilibrium,
the creation of Nobel Laureate John Nash, depicted in the
movie, "A Beautiful Mind."
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Ecology
professor Pej Rohani (left) and economics professor Don Keenan (right)
became collaborators with doctoral student Matt Bonds (center) after
Bonds introduced principles of economics to the study of ecology.
