Research Interests for Shishi Luo

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