Individual Based Modelling in Epidemiology: A Practical Introduction, Stellenbosch, South Africa (March 2017)

News
Prof Wim Delva (SACEMA, Ghent University, Hasselt University and KU Leuven) and Dr Lander Willem (Antwerp University) are presenting an intensive five-day course on Individual-based modelling in epidemiology, organised by SACEMA from March 27-31, 2017. The course will run from 9 am to 4 pm daily, and be held at STIAS (adjacent to SACEMA) in Stellenbosch.
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We must be up to something good: prizes & awards shower!

News
Recently Prof Niel Hens was awarded a €1.6m Consolidator grant from the European Research Council for a new project on mathematical modelling called TransMID The grant will reinforce the SIMID project and the bridge between our research groups in Antwerp and Hasselt. Dr Benson Ogunjimi received the University of Antwerp’s Research Award in Biomedical sciences for his PhD research. Benson is in clinical pediatric training while continuing his postdoctoral research on modelling of within-host immunological response mechanisms. Dr Jeroen Luyten’s PhD thesis was awarded the Flemish Research Foundation’s McKinsey prize . Jeroen is currently at the London School of Economics, and will return to Belgium to join the KULeuven’s faculty. We wish him all the best!
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Dr Adriaan Blommaert

News
Adriaan Blommaert successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Health econometric studies into the determinants of antibiotic consumption and the cost-effectiveness of adult influenza and pneumococcal vaccination strategies." on 3rd February 2016 at the University of Antwerp. It was a joint PhD UAntwerp-UHasselt. Adriaan will continue working at CHERMID on the cost-effectiveness of infectious disease prevention strategies and on identifying the determinants of different forms of health care use.
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SIMID Workshop 2015

News
The Centre for Health Economic Research and Modelling Infectious Diseases (VAXINFECTIO), University of Antwerp and the Center for Statistics (I-BioStat), Hasselt University were pleased to organise the 6th SIMID Workshop in Antwerpen from 28 to 29 April 2015.  This two-day workshop covered the use of statistical methodology in infectious disease epidemiology and for the prioritisation of interventions.  We organised sessions with methodological as well as applied research, including serological data, vector borne diseases, ebola,  as well as dynamics influenced by heterogeneity in transmission, individual behaviour and policy topics such as estimating DALYs and the cost-effectiveness of adult pneumococcal conjugate vaccination. We also organised a poster session. Flyer  - Registration  
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SIMID Course 2015

News
Our sixth SIMID course will take place on 7-11 September 2015 in the historic city of Bruges (Belgium). Topics: - Day 1: General introduction to R - Day 2: Mathematical models for infectious diseases - Day 3: Estimating infectious disease parameters from serological and social contact data - Day 4: Health economic evaluations: general concepts & dealing with uncertainty - Day 5: Health economic evaluations: vaccination programs More info will be released soon!
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PGEE (with R code)

Uncategorized
We have proposed penalized generalized estimating equations with Elastic Net or L2-Smoothly Clipped Absolute Deviation penalization to simultaneously select the most important variables and estimate their effects for longitudinal Gaussian data when multicollinearity is present. The method is able to consistently select and estimate the main effects even when strong correlations are present. In addition, the potential pitfall of time-dependent covariates is clarified. More info...
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Ebola Round Table – How different disciplines are working together to contain Ebola

News
In March 2014, an outbreak of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) was detected in Guinea, with a second wave affecting Sierra Leone and Liberia in June. The outbreak has been unprecedented in magnitude and extent, and already exceeds the sum of all previous cases since the discovery of the disease in 1976. Hasselt University and the University of Antwerp host a round table which will bring together a range of experts – biologists, infectious disease modelers, vaccine experts… – on how the worst epidemic of EVD in human history is tackled. (more…)
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Studenten lopen bij start academiejaar groter risico op mazelen

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De aula’s van hogescholen en universiteiten lopen opnieuw vol, tienduizenden studenten beginnen gemotiveerd aan een nieuw academiejaar. Antwerpse en Hasseltse onderzoekers waarschuwen hen voor een mogelijke heropflakkering van de mazelen. “Jonge twintigers werden immers niet allemaal even goed gevaccineerd, en omdat ze vele contacten hebben, zijn ze vatbaar voor het virus.” (more…)
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Active Learning to Understand Infectious Disease Models and Improve Policy Making

News
In order to improve confidence in model-based conclusions, it is necessary to gain a thorough understanding of the system and assess how model assumptions and parameters alter the results. Surrogate models are very useful for this purpose since they can be readily explored. We used Pareto-aware symbolic regression to analyze input-response data from an open source individual-based model for pandemic influenza, called FluTE (Chao et al 2010). We made a visualization tool to explore the response surfaces from six parameters on the cumulative clinical attack rate. Every parameter must be chosen and the predicted response plots are shown for each parameter with all other parameters fixed. (more…)
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