By Hans Kaper
The last day of the first week of the summer school on “Dynamics and Data in the COVID-19 Pandemic”—organized by the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) and the Mathematics and Climate Research Network (MCRN)—was devoted to several exercises and self-reflection. Anonymous polling was part of each exercise.
Plenary "all-hands" session during the summer school on “Dynamics and Data in the COVID-19 Pandemic," sponsored by the American Institute of Mathematics and the Mathematics and Climate Research Network.
First exercise: Think about questions that you would like us to address, given what we have heard during the week and keeping in mind that ultimately these questions must be translated into the language of mathematics. Participants proposed many suggestions. Among the top candidates were surveillance testing, analysis of epidemic spread among selected subgroups of a population, optimization of test locations and methods for group testing, socio-economic stratification, application of epidemiological methods to the spread of misinformation, and dynamics of concurrent diseases.
Second exercise: Provide your view of the role of mathematics in the study of the COVID-19 pandemic. The top-rated answer to this question was a surprise: “I am not sure.” Once this answer emerged, it quickly gained traction. Many participants clearly shared this feeling of uncertainty but were hesitant to express it. Other responses were more aspirational, and the second-highest-rated reply was “Informing public policy.”
Third exercise: What does the word "model" mean to you? While the term is used in many disciplines, it can have vastly different meanings. The take-home lesson of this exercise was that it is important to determine the word’s implication in a given context.
The afternoon ended with a vigorous game of ultimate tic-tac-toe, a novel challenge for almost all participants.
Particpants of the summer school on “Dynamics and Data in the COVID-19 Pandemic"—sponsored by the American Institute of Mathematics and the Mathematics and Climate Research Network—engage in virtual breakout sessions that encourage further discussion.
The weekend’s homework assignment asked students to read part of "The Mathematics of Infectious Diseases" by Herbert W. Hethcote, which published in SIAM Review in 2000.
What did we learn during week one?
The first weekend offered a general introduction to the topic of the summer school: the dynamics of epidemics, data, and COVID-19. We received an overview of the relevant problems, heard from experts in the field, and got a taste of the available data and models. There was not much mathematics and not much depth as of yet, but the week involved hearty preparation for the real work that is yet to come. Participants also got to know each other, learned how to navigate the virtual conference center, and explored options for future projects.
We look forward to week two, which will involve more detailed discussion of epidemiological models.
Hans Kaper, founding chair of the SIAM Activity Group on Mathematics of Planet Earth and editor-in-chief of SIAM News, is affiliate faculty in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Georgetown University.