In this talk we describe how the modeling, control and learning strategies developed and deployed in communication engineering can help design strategies for modeling the growth of infectious diseases and the counter for infectious diseases, namely testing and vaccination in presence of resource limitations. We subsequently dwell into the intersection of evolution of infectious diseases and opinions about counters.
Saswati Sarkar (Senior Member, IEEE) received the M.E. degree from the Electrical Communication Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, in 1996, and the Ph.D. degree from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Maryland, College Park, in 2000. She joined the Electrical and Systems Engineering Department, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, as an Assistant Professor, in 2000, where she is currently a Professor. Her research interests include complex networks, stochastic control, resource allocation, dynamic games, spread and control of infectious diseases, economics of networks, and cybersecurity. She received the Motorola Gold Medal for the best master’s student at the Division of Electrical Sciences, Indian Institute of Science; and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Award in 2003.