Existing single-scale HIV models often overlook conflicts between within-host and population-level treatment strategies. To resolve this, we develop a multi-scale model with infection-age structure to optimize antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation timing and efficacy through multi-objective optimization. By reformulating initiation time as a control variable in the system, we establish the...
Vaccine-induced immunity is rarely static; rather, an individual's immune state is fundamentally shaped by their unique history of pathogen exposures. Silent exposures to the pathogen may lead to "immune boosting," reinforcing immunity without causing symptomatic infection. Moreover, because a primed immune system can respond to a lower dose of antigen than a naive one, immune boosting can be...
In this paper, we develop a hybrid, networked SEIR framework that integrates generative AI-driven agents to capture individualized protective behavior. Each agent is characterized by demographic and socioeconomic attributes, and a large language model (LLM) generated daily willingness-to-comply scores from prompts that encode personal traits, occupation, and income, local and global epidemic...
Malaria, a parasitic disease spread to humans via effective bite by an infectious adult female Anopheles mosquito, continues to exude a major burden in endemic areas (causing in excess of 600,000 deaths annually, mostly in children under the age of five). Much progress was made over the last two or three decades in the fight against malaria, largely due to the heavy and large-scale use of...
The sterile insect technique (SIT) is a promising strategy for controlling malaria-transmitting Anopheles mosquitoes, but its practical implementation hinges on identifying release protocols that are both effective and resource-efficient. In this talk, I present a mathematical framework for optimizing time-dependent releases of sterile male mosquitoes within a biologically structured...
Culex mosquitoes are a growing concern in North America given their ability to transmit diseases such as West Nile Virus and adapt their thermal tolerances. Culex pipiens, one species found in temperate environments, is predicted to continue to spread north and south of the equator as environmental conditions become more favorable. As climate change persists, it is of high importance to...
In this talk, we shall emphasize on the mathematical modeling of COVID-19 including multiple features of the disease such as vaccination, limited medical resources and contact tracing or screening. We would also model the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions such as quarantine, isolation and information induced behavior changes. Further, via a multi-patch model we shall explore the...
Co-infection of hosts by multiple pathogens can significantly increase disease prevalence and severity. In plant hosts, virus infection typically occurs via multiple transmission pathways. Here, we consider vertical transmission (via seeds, typically between growing seasons) and horizontal transmission (via insect vectors, typically within growing seasons). An open question is whether and how...
Work within the mathematical epidemiology subgroup focuses on critical questions about the emergence, spread, and control of infectious diseases at multiple scales, and to study these questions, we must develop and implement a variety of tools. In this mini-symposium, we feature work across a broad spectrum of infectious disease modeling research and highlight work that members of the SMB...
