Mathematics Colloquium
Stanca Ciupe
Virginia Tech
Title:Mathematical Models of infectious diseases
Date: Monday, March 4, 2024
Place and Time: Love 101, 3:05-3:55 pm
Abstract. Understanding the transmission of a pathogen into a population requires multiscale investigation of individual infections, probability of transmission, immunity landscape, and the roles of control measures, such as vaccination and testing. In this talk, I will present single and multiscale mathematical models of within-host and within-between host infections that incorporate the heterogeneity of individuals' infectiousness and susceptibility into infectious disease models. We will use animal and human data from SARS-CoV-2 and Usutu virus infections as case studies. We will address the dependence of predictions on model structure and data scarcity and will determine how uncertainty in predictions at one scale change predicted results at another scale. Lastly, we investigate in-silico and empirical experiments that ensure identifiability at each scale, hence, inducing robustness in epidemiological model predictions.