Shishi Luo, Graduate Student

I'm currently in my third-year in the Mathematics PhD program. My research is in modeling rapidly evolving infectious diseases, such as influenza. The epidemiology and evolution of such diseases happen on the same time scale. Finding ways of modeling these two processes in a single system is what I am most interested in.

Contact Info:

Office Location:	274H Physics
Office Phone:	(919)660-2853
Email Address:

Education:

BS	University of Queensland	2006
BCommerce	University of Queensland	2006

Specialties:

Applied Math
Probability

Research Interests: Modeling the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases

Many infectious diseases, such as influenza, escape immunity by a process of evolutionary drift. Their antigenic properties change sufficiently within a few years to become unrecognizable by the immune system and thus the virus is capable of reinfection. In these circumstances, traditional SIR models are no longer sufficient to explain disease dynamics, nor can they be used to understand the genetic sequence data of influenza strains which is now widely available. My research aim is to use the tools of applied mathematics to build a model that incorporates both the evolutionary and ecological dynamics of infectious disease and can be tested against genetic data.

Keywords:

Mathematical biology • Infectious diseases • Modeling

Curriculum Vitae

Recent Grant Support

• James B. Duke Fellowship, 2007/08-2011/05.