About "Data analysis of infectious disease epidemics"

 

　Profile #25: Dr. OMORI Ryosuke, Associate Professor

　Division of Bioinformatics,

　International Institute for Zoonosis Control

 

　【Research Topics】

　・Mathematical modelling of infectious disease epidemic dynamics and its analysis

　・Data analysis of infectious disease epidemics by mathematical model

 

 

～Control epidemics by mathematics～ 

 

 We are suffering from the outbreaks of infectious disease including SARS-CoV-2. Effective treatments and prophylaxes have been established against many pathogens so far, however, only Smallpox is controlled by human. Even though the effective treatment and prophylaxes are established, we cannot control infectious diseases without thinking how to conduct them.

 Why we need to think how to conduct them? Because the epidemic of infectious disease is complicated, and it is difficult to predict. I study the epidemic dynamics, how epidemic goes on, using mathematics and statistics. I am developing new methods of data analysis to reveal new findings which are difficult to find by common methods.

 Also, epidemic dynamics is not understood well because the data is not available. I am exploring an alternative of epidemiological data and its application, for example genome data of pathogens or count data of pathogens in environment. Furthermore, I am studying how mathematics and statistics are applied to control infectious disease epidemics in the practical settings.

 

The model prediction of the cases of Influenza B (broken lines) and the data (true lines).

The top panel shows the number of Victoria strain isolates and the bottom panel shows the number of Yamagata isolates.