Nergal - Citizen Science for Epidemiology

We've started a new collaboration with Dr. Matthew Silk and PhD student Nitara Wijayatilake at the University of Edinburgh.

Together we're designing and building a free and open source online game to understand how people's social networks and decision making change how diseases spread through communities. This is something that can't easily be studied in real life, because people's decisions and social interactions are so complex that they are hard to track. The computer models that are used to understand this typically assume that people make perfect, consistent decisions - which isn't realistic. So, we are working together to build an online game world where players can explore, chat with other characters, and catch diseases within the game. This is a safe way to get semi-realistic data for Matt's research, but it should also be fun and interesting to play in its own right.

The game is called Nergal, after the Mesopotamian god of disease and death. We thought it sounded cute, for something so terrifying.

The project is funded by the Royal Society, through Matt's University Research Fellowship, and runs from 2023-2028.

We've also joined the Impetus scheme which has provided some additional funding to make a version of the game that works through sound, so that people with visual impairments can play, this part of the project runs June 2024 - Jan 2025.

illustrations for nergal

IMPETUS is supporting our project. IMPETUS is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 101058677. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Funded by the EU logo

This project has ethics approval from the University of Edinburgh under the title 'Nergal - a citizen science research and public engagement tool in behavioural epidemiology' - Ethics Assessment Reference: msilk-0003.