Epiwork @ EE²-Facing the Challenge of Infectious Diseases
The EE² 2nd International Workshop co-organized by the Epiwork and EpiFor project has been a great success!
The Workshop took place in the magnificent venue provided by Courmayeur and its surrounding landscape. More than 30 invited speakers, including some of the most prominent experts in medical epidemiology and infectious disease modeling, gave talks and seminars over three days, from January 18 to January 21, about the key topics of the meeting:
- Large scale stochastic simulations;
- Networks;
- The impact of population structure on transmission;
- Surveillance and policy making;
- Evolution and epidemiology.
Furthermore, the Workshop featured a 3-day long poster session and four Round Tables which gathered the participants in lively discussions about four selected topics of special interest for the community:
- Vaccines;
- Models of livestock infectious diseases;
- Models and human public health policy;
- Models, data needs, and forecasts.
Epiwork extensively contributed to the Workshop with a number of talks and posters. On the first day of the Workshop, John Edmunds, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, presented the results obtained by different surveillance systems in the UK during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and their implications for the UK public health organization. On the second day, Alex Vespignani, from Northeastern University, discussed the predictive power of large-scale data-driven models. In particular he showed how it has been possible to achieve real-time forecasts with the Global Epidemic and Mobility model (GLEaM) during the unfolding of 2009 H1N1 pandemic.
On the last day of the Workshop, a special session devoted to the study of seasonal influenza featured two Epiwork talks. Gabriela Gomes from the Institute Gulbenkian de Ciência presented an accurate modeling study of the correlation between transmissibility of influenza and weather conditions such as temperature and humidity. The model, which is able to characterize the dependence between flu spread and climate factors, is based on data of temperature and humidity as well as on epidemiological data collected from the project influenzanet, which is at the core of Epiwork WP5. The last talk of the conference was given by Lewi Stone from Tel Aviv University, who presented a modeling study, done within the Epiwork project, of the observed dynamics of the seasonal influenza in Israel.
The last day of the workshop saw also the conclusion of the poster session.
Corrado Gioannini (ISI Foundation) and Joao Zamite (University of Lisbon) presented a poster titled Integrating the GLEaMviz Simulator tool with the Epidemic Marketplace platform, regarding the integration of the GLEaMviz simulator (WP4) with the Epidemic Marketplace information platform (WP3). The occasion allowed Corrado to also offer a hands-on exhibition of the GLEaMviz Simulator by showing the tool and its most recent developments and added capabilities.
Joao Zamite presented a poster titled Owner-Centred Group-Based Access Control for Epidemic Resources, describing the access control paradigm implemented in the Epidemic Marketplace platform.
Francisco Couto, from the University of Lisbon, presented a poster titled Ontologies in the Epidemiological Domain, describing the network of ontologies used for the Epidemic Marketplace metadata.
The three EPIWORK posters presented at the EE2 workshop.
Overall, the Workshop has been an excellent occasion for all the participants to exchange new ideas and views on the research priorities for the future of computational modeling and ICT applications in the analysis of infectious disease spreading.
