How are infectious diseases and pandemics modeled? How can we model and estimate the spread of Influenza or Coronavirus Disease 2019? And most importantly, how can disease modeling help us design effective interventions that contain the spread of a pandemic like COVID-19?

Srini Venkatraman of the Biocomplexity Institute at the University of Virginia joins us on Episode 133 of The Pragati Podcast.

The Pragati Podcast is a weekly talkshow on public policy, economics and international relations hosted by Pavan Srinath.

Srini Venkatramanan is a research scientist at the Biocomplexity Institute, University of Virginia. Hailing from Chennai, Srini did his PhD at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. At the Biocomplexity Institute, he uses mathematical and computational models of human societies to study the spread of infectious diseases and ways to control them. You can reach on Twitter at @sriniv_venkat, and find his research on Google Scholar.

Suggested Links:
1. Using data-driven agent-based models for forecasting emerging infectious diseases (2018). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1755436517300221

1. The Future of Influenza forecasts. (2019) https://www.pnas.org/content/116/8/2802

2. Modelling Disease Outbreaks in realistic urban social networks. (2004) http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/teaching/courses/2009-08UVM-300/docs/others/2004/eubank2004a.pdf

3. Biocomplexity Institute's COVID-19 Dashboard. https://covid19.biocomplexity.virginia.edu/

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