Title：Complex Systems Theory for Modeling and Responding to Infectious Diseases

Speaker: Mr. Du Zhanwei, Researcher

Time: April 21, 2025 (Monday) 10:30am-12:00pm

Venue: Conference Room A402, Mingli Building

Lecture Abstracts:

Major (emerging) infectious diseases (MIDs) continue to threaten global health and public health security, causing enormous socio-economic losses. Establishing a basic understanding of the epidemiological characteristics and transmission dynamics of major (emerging) infectious diseases at the early stage of an epidemic, and reconstructing the transmission dynamics of an epidemic can deepen the understanding of its transmission drivers and mechanisms, and realize the prediction and early warning of the future occurrence and development of an epidemic, which is the core of major (emerging) infectious disease control and is essential for accurate prevention and control. The researcher has long been engaged in the study of infectious disease transmission dynamics and monitoring and early warning methods, and is committed to the study of data-driven modeling and analysis methods, comprehensively utilizing epidemiology, genomics, health economics and other data resources, systematically revealing the cross-regional transmission patterns and evolutionary characteristics of emerging infectious diseases, and forming methodological innovations in the construction of theories of epidemic risk dynamics assessment and multi-scale simulation of intervention measures.

Speaker Information:

Du Zhanwei is a researcher and doctoral supervisor at the Shenzhen Research Institute of the University of Hong Kong, and a member of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control. Currently, he serves as a consultant to the Beijing Health Emergency Management Innovation Center, Shenzhen Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis at Yale University, U.S.A. The reporter was nominated as the inaugural member of the Professional Committee on Public Health Surveillance of the Chinese Association of Preventive Medicine in April 2025.2023, 2024, Stanford University, Top 2% of Top Scientists in the World. He is engaged in data-driven mathematical modeling of complex systems, mathematically modeling the transmission dynamics of various infectious diseases such as influenza, new coronavirus infections, Ebola, etc., and economically evaluating disease intervention strategies. In the past 5 years, he has published more than 50 papers as the first author in The Lancet, Nature Medicine, The Lancet Public Health, PNAS and other international journals, and more than 50 papers as the co-author in Science, PNAS, The Lancet Global Health, Nature Communications, etc. He has also published more than 10 papers as the first author in The Lancet Global Health, The Lancet Public Health and The Lancet Public Health. Communications and other international refereed journals with more than 150 papers, and has been granted 7 patents. He was honored with the Best Team Award for New Crown Research and the Research Achievement Award of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong by the Hong Kong Annual Medical Conference in November 2021, and participated in the National Day event held at the Great Hall of the People in 2023 as a representative of the university's outstanding faculty in Hong Kong. The related research results have been reported more than 100 times by People's Daily, New York Times and Washington Post.