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 of infectious diseases;
• Models and human public health policy;
• Models, data needs, and forecasts.

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“Facing the Challenge of Infectious Diseases” is the tagline for the 2nd International Workshop co-organized by the Epiwork and Epifor projects. This workshop will take place on January 18-20 2012, in Courmayeur (Aosta), Italy. It will bring together experts in the field of infectious disease modeling to discuss the advances reached in the use of sophisticate modeling, computational approaches, and ICT applications in the area of infectious diseases. A special focus will be on methods for generating rapid parameter estimates, real time forecasting and the interface between policy making and modeling. A key aim of the workshop is also the discussion of the research priorities for the future of computational modeling and ICT applications in the analysis of infectious disease spreading.

More information can be found on the workshop’s website.

The teams involved in Epiwork WP4 are pleased to announce the release of GLEaMviz Simulator v2.8. The principal new feature in this release is the ability to specify time-dependent overrides of the default values for variables defined in the compartmental model. Such overrides can be used to model time-dependent changes in the infection dynamics of the epidemic such as the effect of mitigation policies on the disease parameters.

A new panel in the Simulation Wizard, shown in the figure below, enables the modeler to add one or more time-dependent variable overrides. Each override applies for one selected variable and is valid from the selected start date up to and including the selected end date. The overriding value is specified as an algebraic expression that may include references to other variables, just like a default value for variables or transition rates expressions.