NIMBioS Tuesday Seminar Series

In conjunction with the interdisciplinary activities of the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS), a seminar series will be hosted at NIMBioS every other Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. in the NIMBioS Lecture Hall on the 4th floor of 1534 White Ave., Suite 400 Seminar speakers will focus on their research initiatives at the interface of mathematics and many areas of the life sciences. Light refreshments will be served starting at 3 p.m.

Time/Date/Location: 3:30-4:30 p.m., Sept. 15, NIMBioS Lecture Hall, 1534 White Ave., Suite 400
Speaker: Carrie Manore, Oregon State University and Los Alamos National Laboratory
Topic:How Mathematical Models Can Help Control the Spread of Animal Diseases
Abstract: Animal diseases, such as foot-and-mouth disease and avian flu, are increasingly important in world economics, national security, and biodiversity. Rinderpest is an important animal disease related to human measles. It is a highly virulent and often lethal virus affecting cloven-hoofed animals such as cattle, sheep, and pigs. Rinderpest pandemics have caused wide-spread herd loss in Europe and Africa. If the disease enters the United States, it could be devastating to animal agriculture and the economy. To help prepare for this possibility, we create a spatially explicit stochastic model for multi-host animal diseases to better understand their spread in the United States. We explore the effectiveness of mitigation strategies such as quarantine, vaccination, and culling in a case study on rinderpest. Spread of rinderpest is modeled using county-level data and animal transportation rates to capture the within-county and between-county behavior. We compare different mitigation strategies and analyze the sensitivity of final epidemic size to these strategies in order to minimize loss due to an outbreak of rinderpest. Generalizations of control strategies for rinderpest are effective for other contagious animal diseases, such as foot and mouth disease.

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From 2008 until early 2021, NIMBioS was supported by the National Science Foundation through NSF Award #DBI-1300426, with additional support from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.