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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic upended our societies and re-shaped the way we go about our day-to-day lives -- from how we work and interact to the way we buy groceries and attend school. In this talk, I will present a series of studies quantifying how our behavior, mobility patterns, and social networks shaped and were shaped by COVID-19. Leveraging global data sets that represent billions of people, I will show how myriad factors interacted to structure the course of the pandemic. Then, by connecting the mathematics of epidemics to classical theory from ecology, I will outline a strategy for preventing future outbreaks from growing into pandemics. Finally, using the lessons learned from COVID-19, I discuss how we might balance the ethical and privacy considerations around high-resolution data with their critical role in responding to epidemics.
Bio: Samuel V. Scarpino, PhD, is the director of AI + life sciences at Northeastern University and a professor of the practice in health and computer sciences. He holds appointments in Northeastern's Institute for Experiential AI and the Network Science Institute, Global Resilience Institute, and the Roux Institute. Prior to joining Northeastern, Scarpino was the vice president of pathogen surveillance at The Rockefeller Foundation, chief strategy officer at Dharma Platform (a social impact, technology startup), and co-founded a data science initiative called Global.health, which was backed by Google and The Rockefeller Foundation. Outside of these roles, he has over 15 years of experience translating research into decision support and data science/AI tools across diverse sectors from public health and clinical medicine to real estate and energy.
Join by phone - 415-655-0002
Host: Sara del Valle, PhD (A-1), sdelvall@lanl.gov