Speakers
Description
Vector-borne diseases pose major challenges to global health, driven by nonlinear interactions between vector population dynamics, host behavior, pathogen biology, and intervention strategies. Recent advances in mathematical and theoretical biology have enabled increasingly realistic models that move beyond homogeneous assumptions and incorporate heterogeneity such as vaccination, seasonality, and data-driven parameterization.
This mini symposium focuses on recent progress in the mathematical modeling of vector populations and pathogen transmission, with applications to diseases such as malaria and dengue. Topics include models incorporating heterogeneous mosquito biting behavior \cite{Dahlin}, biologically and genetically modified vector control strategies \cite{Pant}, and within-host immune dynamics that feed back into population-level transmission, including antibody-dependent enhancement \cite{Macdonald} and vaccination effects \cite{Qu}. These frameworks give rise to high-dimensional, nonlinear systems that require analytical and computational approaches to ensure identifiability, robustness, and biological interpretability.
The session brings together speakers at multiple career stages, including senior researchers and early-career scientists, to highlight new models motivated by real-world vector-borne disease challenges, foster cross-disciplinary collaboration, and provide a platform for emerging researchers to present innovative theoretical and applied work.
Bibliography
@article{Dahlin, title={Once bitten, twice shy: A modeling framework for incorporating heterogeneous mosquito biting into transmission models}, volume={87}, ISSN={0092-8240, 1522-9602}, url={https://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11538-025-01540-z}, DOI={10.1007/s11538-025-01540-z}, number={11}, journal={Bulletin of Mathematical Biology}, author={Dahlin, Kyle J.-M. and Robert, Michael A. and Childs, Lauren M.}, year={2025}, month=nov, pages={163}, language={en} }
@article{Pant, title={Could malaria mosquitoes be controlled by periodic releases of transgenic mosquitocidal Metarhizium pingshaense fungus? A mathematical modeling approach}, volume={152}, ISSN={0307904X}, url={https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0307904X25006146}, DOI={10.1016/j.apm.2025.116540}, journal={Applied Mathematical Modelling}, author={Pant, Binod and Bilgo, Etienne and Mitra, Arnaja and Safdar, Salman and Diabaté, Abdoulaye and Leger, Raymond St. and Gumel, Abba B.}, year={2026}, month=apr, pages={116540}, language={en} }
@article{Macdonald, title={Robust parameterization of a viral-immune kinetics model for sequential Dengue virus (DENV) infections with Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE)}, url={http://biorxiv.org/lookup/doi/10.1101/2023.08.29.555313}, DOI={10.1101/2023.08.29.555313}, author={Macdonald, Joshua and Gulbudak, Hayriye}, year={2023}, month=aug, language={en} }
@article{Qu, title={Mathematical modeling of malaria vaccination with seasonality and immune feedback}, volume={21}, ISSN={1553-7358}, url={https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012988}, DOI={10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012988}, number={5}, journal={PLOS Computational Biology}, author={Qu, Zhuolin and Patterson, Denis and Zhao, Lihong and Ponce, Joan and Edholm, Christina J. and Prosper Feldman, Olivia F. and Childs, Lauren M.}, editor={Clapham, Hannah E.}, year={2025}, month=may, pages={e1012988}, language={en} }
