Modeling Social Complexity in Epidemiology: Risk Perception and Adaptive Human Behavior
Speaker: Baltazar Espinoza, University of Virginia
Abstract: To study the complex dynamics between behavioral adaptations and epidemic progression, we use a mechanistic modeling framework that explicitly incorporates the interdependence between the (individual-level) adaptive behavioral choices and the (population-level) progression of the infection process. We found that individuals’ risk perceptions in the presence of asymptomatic individuals modulate final epidemic size. Moreover, under behavioral polarization, privately determined behavioral responses may increase the final epidemic size, compared to the homogeneous behavior scenario. Finally, we explored testing as a potential source of misinformation about infection risk that may lead to harmful decisions that increase the epidemic burden.
Bio: Baltazar Espinoza is a Research Assistant Professor in the Network Systems Science and Advanced Computing Division at the University of Virginia. He received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics for Lie and Social Sciences from Arizona State University (ASU) in 2018. His Ph.D. dissertation focused on analyzing population mobility as a disease control mechanism in economically heterogeneous locally connected communities.
Before joining the University of Virginia, he was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at ASU and a Visiting Research Scholar at Brown University. He served as co-director of the Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute (MTBI) at ASU, after having served as MTBI mentor for five years. He has mentored several undergraduate students from Latin America and the United States.