Download The University of Texas at Brownsville & Department of Mathematics

The University of Texas at Brownsville
Department of Computer and Information Sciences
& Department of Mathematics
PPOHA Grant Invited Speaker Series
Guest Speaker: Dr. Carlos Castillo-Chavez
Department of Mathematics
Arizona State University
Tuesday, October 26, 2010, 11:00 AM SET-B 3rd Floor
Title: Complexity and Epidemics: The Case of Influenza
Abstract: Disease dynamics are intimately connected to biological, environmental and social
processes over multiple time scales and levels of social and biological organization. Further, in a
highly interconnected world, epidemic outbreaks become instant potential health and/or
economic global threats with increasing segments of the population playing active roles on the
transmission patterns of infectious diseases like influenza. Despite the myriad of complexities
associated with disease dynamics, macroscopic epidemic patterns emerge but finding effective
ways of making use of this knowledge remain. In this lecture I will address some of these
challenges in a historical context starting with the work of physicians-theoreticians like
Bernoulli, Ross, Kermack and McKendrick. The lecture will be tied in to the epidemiology of
influenza with examples from the H1N1 pandemic that started in Mexico.
Bio: Dr. Castillo Chavez holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of WisconsinMadison (1984). Prior moving to Arizona State University in 2004, he spent 18 years as a
professor at Cornell University. He has published scientific articles, and books, and served on
panels and committees for organizations such as the National Science Foundation, the Sloan
Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics,
and the American Mathematical Society.
His research interests as a mathematical epidemiologist relate to the mechanisms underlying
spread of disease, and their containment (prevention of spread) and elimination. A 2006
editorial at Arizona State University, a year after his arrival there, described him as one of the
most prominent mathematicians in the country, an expert in epidemiological modeling, and
among the top research contributors to literature on the progression of diseases.