Dr. Kris V. Parag - Chemical Kinetics and Epidemics - Virtual SeminarI will describe and derive some of the fundamental principles of infectious disease epidemiology – but from the perspective of a chemist. Using standard epidemic models, I will provide grounding for some popular public health terms such as ‘flatten the curve’, ‘exponential growth’ and ‘super-spreading’. By considering links to reaction kinetics in particular, I will show how intuition from chemistry might help explain why interventions such as social distancing and quarantines work. Where possible, links to current work on COVID-19 will be made, though the focus of the talk is on epidemiological principles that apply to any infectious outbreak.
About the speaker
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Dr. Kris V. Parag is currently an MRC skills development fellow at Imperial College London and part of the COVID-19 response team within the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis. His main research interests are in the statistical properties of infectious disease models, with a focus on understanding how models can be constructed to minimise complexity yet maximise reliability. Kris’ path to epidemiology has been a strange one having trained as an aerospace engineer before undertaking a PhD in control theory. He then ventured into zoology before finding an interest in epidemic dynamics. As a result, and as this talk will reflect, he maintains a partiality to multidisciplinary perspectives and believes that a few key equations could be responsible for a disproportionate number of results. |