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CCMS Colloquium: Lihong Zhao (Kennesaw State University)
March 6 @ 11:00 am - 12:15 pm
CCMS Colloquium invites you to a talk by Lihong Zhao (Kennesaw State University)
Title: Capturing heterogeneity in malaria transmission: an age-structured model with immune feedback and seasonality
Abstract: Malaria remains a major global health burden, causing more than 600,000 deaths and over 249 million cases globally each year. Heterogeneity in malaria transmission is a critical factor that influences the dynamics of disease emergence and the effectiveness of possible control strategies. In this talk, I will present an age-structured model that couples vector-host epidemiological dynamics with immune feedback and how we use it to characterize seasonal malaria transmission and assess the impact of vaccination strategies. We also extend this model to explore how different mobility patterns and immunity profiles interact to impact the risk of severe infection and prevalence.
Bio: Dr. Lihong Zhao is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Kennesaw State University (KSU). Prior to her position at KSU, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Virginia Tech and an NSF DIRAC-RTG postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of California, Merced. She develops and analyzes mathematical and computational models to examine questions in life sciences. Most of her work focuses on infectious disease epidemiology and ecology.
