Math Biology Seminar: Cody Palmer

Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT) is a vector-borne disease endemic to rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. Over the last 150 years the disease has been a serious challenge to the people of Africa, with multiple outbreaks resulting the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Recent work by local programs and NGOs has had a large impact on controlling HAT through interventions like screening and vector control, and has brought the total number of recorded cases of HAT to its lowest point ever. However, this low number of cases brings with it a peculiar set of challenges in the pursuit of elimination of HAT. In this talk we will discuss how mathematical modeling and new data analysis methods can be brought to bear on some of these challenges. In particular, we will be using traditional models to assess the future impact of various interventions, to demonstrate the need for finer case data, and we will be using an equation-free data analysis method (Dynamic Mode Decomposition) to identify hotspots of disease activity and areas of low treatment coverage in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.