Tuesday, December 20th, 2022
Assaggio Bistro Kahala
4346 Waialae Avenue
Social/dinner hour from 7.15 pm: talk starts 8 pm
Everybody welcome: no admission charge
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Monique Chyba
Department of Mathematics, UH Manoa
Pandemic Modelling Gone Viral
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented disruption to the world, infecting millions and shutting down large parts of the world economy. Mathematical models have been central to the public and policy debate throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The rapid spread of the infection created an emergency where we lacked reliable estimates for the information needed to make quick decisions in an acute setting. On top of these challenges, the evolution of a pandemic is people-driven, and human behavior is complex, unpredictable, and changes with time, possibly very rapidly. Social distancing measures and masking measures at the macro-scale of humans are not well understood, and reliable estimates do not exist.
Dr. Chyba will reflect on two years of pandemic modeling for the state of Hawai‘i in this pandemic, discussing its challenges and how it might serve as a step toward more established structure, such as a pandemic prevention center
Dr. Chyba joined the department of mathematics at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa in 2002 after a journey from Switzerland, where she earned her PhD, to Paris, Harvard, Princeton, Santa Cruz, and finally Honolulu. For the past few years, she is increasingly focused on modeling and data-driven research. With colleagues and students, and in partnership with the Hawaii Pandemic Applied Modeling work group, she has developed models and mathematical tools for analyzing the spread of COVID-19 during the current pandemic
