This course will provide training in leveraging both epidemiological and genomic data for creating more sophisticated models that allow for more accurate, more sensitive, and earlier detection of changes and trends in epidemics.

Public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and growing antimicrobial resistance, have reiterated the importance of mathematical modelling to unveil mechanisms of disease transmission, simulate the impact of interventions, and predict pathogens’ evolution. In parallel, the development of advanced bioinformatics methods have allowed us to improve and refine different tools to create accurate predictive models that, at the same time, are also flexible to include and interpret novel information that can be relevant for the models. Therefore, our course in mathematical modelling of infectious diseases will contribute to build essential capacity in pandemic preparedness, training professionals in the use of state-of-the-art tools.

Furthermore, in the past infectious disease models were based almost entirely on epidemiological information, but nowadays the impact that genomics data can have in mathematical modelling is increasing, as the quick turnover of sequencing results allows to incorporate genomics information into the models.