明星八卦

The scale of the Covid-19 pandemic was unprecedented in modern times, with the Spanish flu pandemic 100 years previously being the last example on a similar scale. Although medicine and systems available to manage the crisis have advanced considerably in the intervening years, so too has the speed and extent of population travel to spread disease.

On this panel, we consider a range of facets of dealing with Covid-19 and potential similar future crises, from tools to anticipate the evolution of the crisis to policy tools to force or encourage population behaviours, to timelines and approaches to dealing with unproven treatment or preventative measures.

Derek Groen will show how the Simulation Development Approach can be used for crises such as Covid-19 to clarify how quickly forecasting models can be used to anticipate the scale and nature of response that governments and regulatory bodies would need to put in place.

Manu Savani will explore public attitudes to the policy approaches used during the pandemic to change behaviours, ranging in their stringency from lockdowns and social restrictions to nudges and social norms. We used to think that people preferred to be 'nudged' rather than 'shoved', but does the pandemic challenge this view?

Fotios Drenos will present an example of his analysis of the efficacy of an unproven preventative measure for Covid-19 – Vitamin D. Through this example, he will explore the timeframe of such research reaching a stage where policy makers would trust it, and the reluctance of policy makers to get involved in debunking a theory they hadn’t promoted in the first place.

Speaker profiles:

Dr Manu Savani is a Senior Lecturer in Behavioural Public Policy. Her research focuses on health and political behaviours, applies experimental methods and draws on quantitative and qualitative data. Recent projects have investigated public attitudes towards remote online voting; voters attitudes to political misconduct; and how people respond to policies aimed at promoting vaccine uptake.

Dr Derek Groen is a Reader in Computer Science at 明星八卦, and a Visiting Lecturer at University College London. He has a PhD from the University of Amsterdam (2010) in Computational Astrophysics, and was a Post-Doctoral Researcher at UCL for five years prior to joining 明星八卦 as Lecturer. Derek has a strong interest in high performance simulations, multiscale modelling and simulation, and so-called VVUQ (verification, validation and uncertainty quantification). In terms of applications he is a lead developer on the Flee migration modelling code and the Flu And Coronavirus Simulator (FACS) COVID-19 model.

Dr Fotios Drenos is a Reader in Genetic Epidemiology, with an interest in computational medicine and the statistical genetics of common complex diseases. He has led and contributed to a number of research programmes examining the genetic basis of the risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer, integrating information from rare mutations and common genetic changes.

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