Title of talk: Mathematics and Epidemics: Challenges and Opportunities

Speaker: Prof Carlos Castillo-Chavez (Arizona State University, USA)

Date: Monday 28 October 2013

Time: 9:15 – 10:15

Venue: Botany 2-26

Contact person:
Prof Jean Lubuma
Tel:  (012) 420-2222/3582
e-mail:  [email protected]

Abstract
The marriage of mathematics and epidemics has a long and distinguished history with a plethora of successes that go back to the work of Daniel Bernoulli (1700 – 1782) and Nobel Laureate and physician Sir Ronald Ross (1911) and associates. These individuals, mostly physicians, created the field of mathematical epidemiology in response to their commitment to diminish the consequences of inadequate health services and poverty on health disparities. The last four decades have seen tremendous theoretical advances in the fields of computational, mathematical and theoretical epidemiology. Advances driven by concerns on the dynamics of emergent or re-emergent diseases and their impact on health disparities.  Challenges and opportunities arise from the need to study disease dynamics over multiple time scales and levels of organization in response to questions that emerge from the fields of public health, homeland security and evolutionary biology. In this lecture, I will revisit some of the history of the field and discuss some recent applications in the context of slow and fast diseases (such as tuberculosis and Influenza); highlight the theory of single versus recurrent outbreaks while addressing some recent advances.