In 2004, John Callahan was working with the US government to develop a system that could respond to what was then a rapidly worsening crisis: avian flu. Callahan was studying for a master’s degree in information systems and quantitative analysis – a programme that effectively combined computer science and business – at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. At the time, the university was approached by the military to see if it could help build a tool to track the spread of the contagious disease. “To be very honest with that, I could not, but I said I could,” he says…

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