As both a computer scientist and medical doctor, he realized that spam and HIV share certain traits-they mutate constantly, have myriad potential variations, and spread quickly. Heckerman's team at Microsoft’s Research Labs uses graphical models for data analysis and visualization to track how the virus mutates in hopes of building a vaccine to finally stop it. He has partnered with two major research consortiums, IHAC (the International HIV Adaptation Collaborative) and the International HIV Controllers Study, a group that tracks people who are managing to keep the virus at bay without major medications, and hopes to help usher a new kind of vaccine to clinical trials in South Africa sometime within the next two years.
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