Thomas House: Infectious Disease Dynamics in the 21st century: Theory and Data

Abstract: Infectious Disease Epidemiology has had a strong tradition of being informed by theoretical, mechanistic models of transmission, with the highly influential work of Kermack and McKendrick coming up to its century. This led to significant progress in understanding the dynamical processes underlying epidemics, and increasingly informs the public health system's outbreak responses. More recently, data availability has undergone the revolution seen elsewhere in science leading to questions about how much data-driven approaches should be used versus theory-driven modelling and data analysis. In this talk I will introduce the foundations of epidemic modelling, and why these are complementary, rather than opposed, to making use of complex data such as pathogen genomes.