Modelling COVID-19

Abstract

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, mathematical epidemiologists share their views on what models reveal about how the disease has spread, the current state of play and what work still needs to be done. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, mathematical epidemiologists share their views on what models reveal about how the disease has spread, the current state of play and what work still needs to be done. Alessandro Vespignani is an Italian-American physicist, currently Sternberg Family Distinguished University Professor of Physics, Computer Science and Health Sciences at Northeastern University in Boston, USA. He is the director of the Network Science Institute, and is best known for his work on complex networks and his contributions to computational epidemiology by developing specific tools for analysing the global spread of epidemics. Huaiyu Tian is a Professor of Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease at Beijing Normal University, China, and Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford. His interdisciplinary research focuses on the mechanistic processes that link biological and ecological change to disease dynamics. His lab combines geospatial computing, field surveillance, molecular epidemiology and ecological modelling. Christopher Dye is a Visiting Professor of Zoology and Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford. He is a former Director of Strategy at the World Health Organization, and is currently editor of coronavirusexplained.ukri.org/en/, a website that explains the science of coronavirus outbreaks, hosted by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). James O. Lloyd-Smith is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research explores the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of infectious disease in animal and human populations, with emphasis on the emergence of novel pathogens. His group combines mathematical models, statistical analysis, and laboratory, clinical and field studies to study diseases such as monkeypox, leptospirosis, influenza and now COVID-19. Rosalind M. Eggo is a mathematical modeller focusing on directly transmitted viral pathogens and the severe outcomes resulting from infection. She works at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Munik Shrestha is a postdoctoral researcher at Northeastern University in the Network Science Institute. He has contributed fundamental theory on message-passing algorithms for estimating the time-varying statistics of epidemics. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of New Mexico and was a Santa Fe Institute graduate fellow. Samuel V. Scarpino is an assistant professor in the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University, with appointments in marine and environmental sciences, physics, and health sciences. He is also an ISI Foundation complexity fellow. Scarpino earned a Ph.D. in evolution, ecology and behaviour from the University of Texas at Austin and was a Santa Fe Institute Omidyar postdoctoral fellow. Bernardo Gutierrez is a D.Phil. student in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford, and a guest researcher at Universidad San Francisco de Quito. He studies the evolution of emerging viruses and the integration of epidemiological and genomic data to track outbreaks. He began contributing to the Open COVID-19 Data Working Group during the start of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in January 2020. Moritz U. G. Kraemer is a research fellow at the University of Oxford and founder of the Open COVID-19 Data Working Group. Moritz is an epidemiologist working on the integration of multiple data streams to better understand the dynamics of emerging infectious diseases. Joseph Wu is a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong. He specializes in disease modelling and data science. Kathy Leung is an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong. She specializes in mathematical modelling of communicable and non-communicable diseases, including COVID-19, influenza, Middle East respiratory syndrome, human papillomavirus, colorectal cancer and breast cancer. Gabriel M. Leung is an infectious disease epidemiologist, Dean of Medicine and Zimmern Professor of Population Health at the University of Hong Kong.

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