Carolina Fransson: Stochastic epidemic models and random graphs

One of the most important factors that determines the fate of an outbreak of an infectious disease is the contact patterns in the population; the frequency and duration of the contacts between individuals typically depend on the nature of their relationship. To incorporate social structure in an epidemic model one may represent the underlying social network by a graph. In the first part of this talk, I will give an introduction to stochastic epidemic models. The focus will be on models where the social network is represented by a random graph and some key tools in the analysis of such models. The second part will focus on models where the social network exhibits group structure.