Presented by Jeff Shaman, PhD, Professor
Environmental Health Sciences Mailman School of Public Health
Director, Climate and Health Program, Columbia University

Dynamic models of infectious disease systems are often used to study the epidemiological characteristics of disease outbreaks, the ecological mechanisms and environmental conditions affecting transmission, and the suitability of various mitigation and intervention strategies. In recent years these same models have been employed to generate probabilistic forecasts of infectious disease incidence at the population scale. Dr. Shaman will present research from his group describing the development of model systems and combined model-inference frameworks capable of simulation, inference and forecast of disease outbreaks with a particular focus on influenza and SARS-CoV-2. The modeling work by Dr. Shaman’s group estimated that delayed shutdowns early in the pandemic cost more than 30,000 lives.