With the recent increase in computing power, agent-based simulations have become progressively more complex. There is a growing tendency to include greater detail of sexual networks, disease progression, and targeted interventions into STI models to answer relevant public health questions. However, increasing model complexity also amplifies data requirements, and often necessitates the...
Early-warning signals (EWSs) are crucial tools for anticipating disease emergence and guiding public-health responses, but uncertainties in transmission and incomplete data can limit their reliability. Additionally, the performance of EWSs is rarely evaluated when disease emergence is delayed, and their use in the context of interactions between disease transmission and communication through...
Post-infection mortality is an important yet often overlooked factor in epidemiological modeling, as it directly influences both disease prevalence and long-term population structure. In this work, we revisit and analyze compartmental models that explicitly incorporates post-infection mortality along with partial immunity, and we investigate how disease outcomes depend on the choice of...
In August 2021, a major wave of the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant erupted in the highly vaccinated population of Israel. The transmission advantage of the Delta variant enabled it to replace the Alpha variant in approximately two months. The outbreak led to an unexpectedly large proportion of breakthrough infections (BTI)โa phenomenon that received worldwide attention. Most of the Israeli...
Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) remains the most reported bacterial sexually transmitted infection in the United States (US), underscoring the urgent need for an effective vaccine. An agent-based model calibrated to the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) datasets was developed and used to study the impact of vaccine on the CT and all-cause pelvic inflammatory disease (PID)...
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of individual decision-making for adherence to an intervention. In this talk, I will use simple mathematical models to examine the dynamics of individual adherence to an intervention, and examine when tensions might arise between individuals and societies. I will also examine the effects of adherence to a nonpharmaceutical intervention on...
Existing established alternative methods for modeling seasonality use sinusoidal forcing functions, flexible splines, etc. In this talk, I outline a novel method for incorporating seasonality into the SIRS model using modular arithmetic. The study proposes a modular arithmetic approach to model seasonal variations in influenza transmission rates, with smooth transitions between them. Unlike...
Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and other communicable diseases remain a major global public health challenge due to complex transmission dynamics, heterogeneous contact patterns, and strong social, behavioral, and biological interactions. Mathematical and computational modeling is essential for understanding STD dynamics and evaluating prevention, screening, and intervention...
