“Mathematical modelling of infectious disease outbreaks like covid-19”

Mathematical models for the spread of infectious diseases are used to: 
better understand spreading mechanisms, determine if a big outbreak is 
likely to occur and how big it will be, determine if a disease will 
become endemic, and investigate how various preventive measures can 
reduce spreading hopefully preventing a major pandemic outbreak or make 
an endemic disease vanish. Making inference is harder than usual in that 
the basic events, transmissions, are rarely observed but instead proxies 
like onset of symptoms are recorded, and also by the fact that these 
events are dependent rather than independent (as is usually the case).

In the talk I will give an overview of the area with particular focus on 
emerging outbreaks, including illustrations from the current coronavirus outbreak.