Bridging the scales of disease dynamics 2006

The ongoing HIV pandemic, the brief SARS epidemic of 2003 and recurrent fears of a serious influenza outbreak have raised public consciousness of issues surrounding the behaviour and evolution of infectious diseases as they spread through a population. Theoretical/mathematical analysis of infectious disease has become organized around two key scales: First, understanding epidemics across populations of individual hosts, and second, understanding the disease progression within one such host. At the larger scale, models are informed by epidemiological data and sociological notions of host population structure and the frequency of infectious contacts between such hosts. At the scale of a single host, models often rely on experimental data obtained from patients, and from in vitro and in vivo laboratory experiments.

This workshop will provide a forum for presentation of leading-edge research focused on disease dynamics at both population and host scales as well as from scientists working to understand the interaction of the scales on the behaviour and evolution of infectious disease. Applications to clinically important diseases will be stressed. The overall goal of the workshop is to bring a broader perspective to understanding the behaviour and evolution of infectious diseases by facilitating interactions between scientists working at these multiple scales of inquiry.

This event is sponsored by the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS) and is part of the activities of the PIMS collaborative research group on Mathematical Modelling and Computation in Biology.