Search Research Symposium Abstracts

A mathematical modeling exploration of data assimilation for simple model fitting

Data Assimilation (DA) techniques, such as Kalman filtering, have historically been employed in engineering applications, but are rarely used by mathematical modelers or taught to mathematics students. However, because of DA's fusing of mechanistic modeling with machine-learning approaches, it holds great potential for strengthening the predictive power of [Read More...]

Presenter: Christina Catlett, Scripps College
Authors: Christina Catlett, Lisette de Pillis, An Dela, Christina J. Edholm, Daniel Shenker, Blerta Shtylla, Rachel Wander, Maya Watanabe
Symposium Year: 2022
Session: Recent Developments in Ecological and Epidemiological Modeling
Presentation Time: June 17, 2022; 10:15 am

Game-theoretic optimal resource allocation and defense strategies in herbaceous plants

Game theory can be used to model many different situations in which we have interactions where one player's payoff is dependent on the actions other players take. Applying this approach to plant ecology, we examine the extent to which investment in defense against herbivores depends on investment strategies of other plants in the area. We begin by [Read More...]

Presenter: Molly Creagar, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Symposium Year: 2022
Session: Recent Developments in Ecological and Epidemiological Modeling
Presentation Time: June 17, 2022; 10:40 am

Elements of disease in a changing world: modelling feedbacks between infectious disease and ecosystems

An overlooked effect of ecosystem eutrophication is the potential to alter disease dynamics in primary producers, inducing disease-mediated feedback that alter net primary productivity and elemental recycling. Models in disease ecology rarely track organisms past death, yet death from infection can alter important ecosystem processes including elemental [Read More...]

Presenter: Lale Asik, University of the Incarnate Word
Authors: Elizabeth T. Borer, Angela Peace, Rebecca A. Everett
Symposium Year: 2022
Session: Recent Developments in Ecological and Epidemiological Modeling
Presentation Time: June 17, 2022; 11:05 am

Population dynamical modeling of the invasive spotted lanternfly with stage-age-structured PDEs

Invasive pest establishment is a pervasive threat to global ecosystems, agriculture, and public health, and one that is increasing as climate change intensifies. One pest of significant concern is the spotted lanternfly (SLF, Lycorma delicatula), a voracious feeder of over 100 plants, including grape, apple, hop, and other important crops. In the eight [Read More...]

Presenter: Stephanie Lewkiewicz, Temple University
Authors: Stephanie Lewkiewicz, Sebastiano De Bona, Matthew Helmus, and Benjamin Seibold
Symposium Year: 2022
Session: Recent Developments in Ecological and Epidemiological Modeling
Presentation Time: June 17, 2022; 11:30 am

Sensitivity Analysis of COVID-19 Dynamics on Structured College Campuses

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many higher educational institutions moved their courses from face-to-face instruction to online or hybrid instruction, in hopes of slowing disease spread. The advent of multiple highly-effective vaccines offers the promise of a return to ``normal'' in-person operations, but it is not clear if -- or for how long -- [Read More...]

Presenter: Lihong Zhao, University of California, Merced
Authors: Lihong Zhao, Fabian Santiago, Erica M. Rutter, Shilpa Khatri, Suzanne Sindi
Symposium Year: 2022
Session: Recent Developments in Ecological and Epidemiological Modeling
Presentation Time: June 17, 2022; 3:30 pm

Evaluation of the United States COVID-19 Vaccine Allocation Strategy

Anticipating an initial shortage of vaccines for COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States developed priority vaccine allocations for specific demographic groups in the population. In this talk, I present our recent study that evaluates the performance of the CDC vaccine allocation strategy with respect to multiple potentially [Read More...]

Presenter: Md Rafiul Islam, Iowa State University
Authors: Md Rafiul Islam, Tamer Oraby, Audrey McCombs, Mohammad Mihrab Chowdhury, Mohammad Al-Mamun, Michael G. Tyshenko, Claus Kadelka
Symposium Year: 2022
Session: Recent Developments in Ecological and Epidemiological Modeling
Presentation Time: June 17, 2022; 3:55 pm

Rectification of delays in reporting disease incidence with an application to forecasting COVID-19 cases

Real-time tracking of the trends in an infectious disease incidence is of major public health concern. Systemic errors in estimating a disease case counts are mostly introduced by the delay between onsets of symptoms and reporting to central databases. Whilst reporting error in epidemic data remains inevitable, its potential to undermine the predictability [Read More...]

Presenter: Yunus Abdulhameed Abdussalam, Department of Mathematics, University of Texas at San Antonio
Authors: Jacob B. Aguilar, Samuel Roberts, James Kercheville, Juan B. Gutiérrez
Symposium Year: 2022
Session: Recent Developments in Ecological and Epidemiological Modeling
Presentation Time: June 17, 2022; 4:20 pm

Modeling spatial waves of Wolbachia invasion for controlling mosquito-borne diseases

Wolbachia is a natural bacterium that can infect mosquitoes and reduce their ability to transmit mosquito-borne diseases, such as dengue fever, Zika, and chikungunya. Field trials and modeling studies have shown that the fraction of infection among the mosquitoes must exceed a threshold level for the infection to persist. To capture this threshold, it is [Read More...]

Presenter: Zhuolin Qu, University of Texas at San Antonio
Authors: Zhuolin Qu, Tong Wu, and James M. Hyman
Symposium Year: 2022
Session: Recent Developments in Ecological and Epidemiological Modeling
Presentation Time: June 17, 2022; 4:45 pm