Epidemiological Science and How Physicists Can Contribute: The Science of Modeling Infectious Disease Outbreaks

Epidemiological modeling of infectious disease transmission informs public health decision-making by providing a way to synthesize data from multiple data sources, adjust for potential biases, forecast the trajectory, evaluate the impact of interventions, and conduct sensitivity analyses. We often adapt methods from the physical sciences, with compartmental models comprised of ordinary differential equations serving a central role in modeling of emerging infectious diseases. Network models also provide important insights about optimizing public health prevention strategies (e.g., including evaluation of targeted prevention strategies focused on influential nodes) for infectious diseases, including Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Using a variety of analytic approaches, we have modeled transmissions among individuals within healthcare facilities, (e.g., nursing homes) to assess the relative value of different testing and mitigation strategies, including comparing the impact of testing strategies focused on either nursing home residents or healthcare providers. Careers in public health can allow physical scientists to apply their strong analytic skillsets distilling the essence of a complex system into a model that informs translation of data into action.