Google throws its computing brains into tackling the Zika virus - CNET

Before the mosquito-boe Zika virus hit Latin America hard last November, almost no one outside of the region had ever heard of the disease. Four months later, the trend is reversed. Zika has popped up in headlines and casual conversations across the globe.

Much about the virus remains a mystery, and not just to the non-medical folk of the world. Zika is tricky to identify, to map and to contain. It doesn't help that four in five people with the virus don't show any symptoms.

Now tech giant Google has decided to throw its vast processing power behind the mission to understand the disease and try to get ahead of its spread. The company said in a blog post Thursday that it has partnered with children's charity Unicef, lending engineers to the cause and donating $1 million to support the charity's work on the ground.

In an attempt to map the virus and anticipate its next moves, the Mountain View, Califoia, company is using its data crunching abilities to analyzing the vast amounts of Zika-related information at scale and at speed.

Epidemics rapidly spread across the globe in today's interconnected world. At the same time, new technology also is profoundly changing how we understand and fight them.