Modeling and Big Data for Pandemic Response

Years of preparedness and scientific progress have been harshly put at test in the most difficult health crisis of the last 100 years. Following the path of our experience in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in this talk Vittoria Colizza will discuss pitfalls, challenges and opportunities to improve modeling and data analytics for pandemic response.

Colizza has been active in the response against the COVID-19 pandemic, advising French public health agencies, government authorities and international agencies. For her work on the pandemic, in 2020 she received her Knighthood of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic by the Italian President.

This talk will be held in person and via Zoom.

Light refreshments will be served.

Vittoria Colizza is Head of Research at INSERM (French National Institute for Health and Medical Research) & Sorbonne Universite, Falcuty of Medicine, working in the Pierre Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health. She is an expert in modelling to assess epidemic and pandemic risks, anticipate their propagation, and evaluate prevention and control strategies to inform public health policies, accounting for population behavior in contacts and mobility. Colizza currently holds a position as Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Georgetown University Department of Biology, the Georgetown Global Health Institute and the Massive Data Institute in Washington DC.

Trained as a physicist (PhD in Statistical and Biological Physics in 2004), she worked at Indiana University in the School of INformatics as post-doc and visiting Assistant Professor, and joined ISI Foundation after being awarded an ERC Starting Grant in LIfe Sciences in 2007. In 2011 Colizza joined INSERM in Paris, and was promoted to Head of Research in 2017. In 2020-2022 she was Visiting Professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan.