Detecting signatures of contact processes from outbreak dynamics
March 26, 2014 @ 01:20 pm
to 02:10 pm
Spencer Carran, Penn State
104 Forest Resources Building
The manner in which people interact plays an important role in governing disease transmission and, therefore, outbreak dynamics. Previous studies have attempted to derive population-level mixing patterns from descriptions of typical behaviors and assumed that disease transmission operates across those connections. I will instead seek to discern mixing patterns from observed outbreak dynamics. Since mixing patterns control epidemic progression, observed case data should permit us to determine which of several proposed mixing structures is most consistent with an actual epidemic.