Relazione su invito
Complexity in humans and pathogens: impact on emerging epidemics.
Poletto C.
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has shown the threat modern emerging viruses pose to society. Efficient epidemic management requires situational awareness and deep knowledge of the drivers of virus propagation. Epidemics are non-linear phenomena. Human-to-human interactions, forming the substratum of the infection spread, are heterogeneous and multiscale. Therefore, complexity science represents the essential framework to interpret observations. Modeling approaches from network theory and statistical mechanics allow us to address problems of both conceptual and practical relevance: from identifying the conditions for the large-scale spread of a pathogen to predicting the spatiotemporal pattern of diffusion. During the talk, I will present recent works on emerging pathogen events, including the analysis of recent epidemics and pandemics ($e.g.$, COVID-19 pandemic) and theoretical studies of the mechanisms driving pathogen dynamics.