CSH Talk by Leonhard Horstmeyer: “Understanding epidemic transitions by means of moment closures”

Join us for the CSH Lunch Talk by Leonhard Horstmeyer on Tuesday, April 11, at 11 am at the Hub in Room 101.

Abstract:

Leonhard will give an overview of epidemics on networks and the role of the mean field approximations and higher order moment approximations in explaining epidemic transitions. One of the key difficulties in handling these models analytically is the way in which one accounts for the network structure. Several approaches rely on mean field descriptions, but how well do they perform in giving us correct insights? Another approach, which is to some extend a generalization of the mean field, relies on the inclusion of higher order moments other than the bare mean. These methods go under the name of moment closures. He will exhibit one of them in the context of SIS models, namely the pair approximation, and argue for its efficacy.