DIMACS Workshop on Facing the Challenge of Infectious Diseases in Africa: The Role of Mathematical Modeling

September 25 - 27, 2006
University of the Witwatersrand (Wits)
Sports Administration Building - the West Campus
Johannesburg, South Africa

Organizers:
Dominic Clemence, North Carolina AT&T State University, clemence@ncat.edu
Wayne Getz, UC Berkeley, getz@nature.berkeley.edu
Abba Gumel, University of Manitoba, gumelab@cc.umanitoba.ca
John Hargrove, SACEMA Director, jhargrove@sun.ac.za
Edward Lungu, University of Botswana, lunguem@noka.ub.bw
Fred Roberts, DIMACS, froberts@dimacs.rutgers.edu
Presented under the auspices of the Special Focus on Computational and Mathematical Epidemiology.

This workshop is jointly organized with African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS),
South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis (SACEMA) and University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

This workshop is jointly sponsored by:


The Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS), in collaboration with the South African DST/NRF Department of Science and Technology/National Research Foundation Centre of Excellence in Epidemiological Modeling and Analysis (SACEMA), will hold a 3-day Workshop on mathematical modeling and infectious diseases in Africa. The workshop, to be held at the School of Computational and Applied Mathematics at the University of the Witwatersrand. (Wits), Johannesburg, South Africa, on September 26-28, 2006, will bring together scientists from the US and various African countries, as well as junior researchers and students from the US and Africa. Mathematical modeling of the spread of infectious disease has a long history going back to the work of Bernoulli in the modeling of smallpox in 1760. However, endemic and emerging diseases in Africa provide new and complex challenges for mathematical modeling, challenges we shall aim to identify and explore through this workshop. The workshop will provide an agenda for future collaborations between US and African scientists. It will expose junior US scientists and students to the special challenges of modeling the spread of disease in Africa and the opportunities to collaborate with Africans in developing and applying the tools of mathematical modeling to the tremendous health problems caused by such diseases as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, as well as the possible interventions in the case of major new health threats such as pandemic influenza in a developing region of the world.


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Document last modified on October 10, 2007.