Instructor: Prof. Jianhong Wu
Email: wujh@yorku.ca
Registration Deadline: September 12th, 2022
Lecture Times: Tuesday and Thursday | 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM ET
Lecture Details: Tuesday classes will focus on the bidirectional translation and interpretation between public health issues of prototypical infectious diseases and mathematical formulations and analyses. Thursday lectures will introduce the relevant mathematical framework and methodologies.
Course Dates: September 6th - December 1st, 2022
Mid-Semester Break: October 10th - 14th, 2022
Prerequisites: Ordinary Differential Equations (undergraduate level) and Linear Algebra (undergraduate level).
Grading: Students will be assigned individual projects (each student, 2 projects). They are expected to prepare short reports on each project and deliver short presentations (each project about 8 minutes with follow-up Q&A).
Registration Fees: Free for members (students, postdocs, etc) of Canadian Unviersities - $500 CAD for students outside of Canada 

Course Overview

This course will cover selected topics of mathematical modelling and analysis applied to addressing public health issues relevant to:

1. Respiratory infection and pandemics;
2. Vector-borne disease spread and climate impact;
3. Antimicrobial drug resistance diversity measurement;
4. Food-borne pathogen cross-contamination.

Epidemiological motivations for a variety of transmission dynamics model templates (ordinary differential equations, renewal equations, delay differential systems, reaction-diffusion equations, periodic systems) will be introduced to justify the introduction of structured variables, development delays, periodic seasonal variation, climate warming, spatial movement (long-range dispersal and short-range diffusion), and multi-scale coupling. The focus will be on using existing theoretical tools to describe disease spread patterns and mechanisms behind observed patterns, on scenario analysis, dynamical optimization, and policy implications. Issues to be addressed, using the introduced mathematical models and analyses, include the roles of migratory birds in the global spread of avian influenza; respiratory infection spread through intercontinental air travel; co-circulation of respiratory diseases (influenza and COVID-19); impact of vaccination on outbreak final size and attack ratio; co-evolution of information propagation, individual behaviours and disease spread in the population; emergency of drug resistance; systemic vs co-feeding transmission of vector-borne diseases and impact of climate warming; the delay between vector range expansion and pathogen establishment; cross-contamination of food-borne pathogens during industrial washing processes. Course notes and references drawn from recent publications will be provided.