Dr. Marc Lipsitch

Dr. Marc Lipsitch is Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is an author of more than 200 peer-reviewed publications on antimicrobial resistance, mathematical modeling of infectious disease transmission, bacterial and human population genetics, and immunity to Streptococcus pneumoniae. His group produced one of the earliest estimates of transmissibility of the SARS virus in real time in 2003, and provided a key estimate of the transmissibility of 1918 pandemic influenza.

Dr. Lipsitch has provided advice on antimicrobial resistance, SARS, and influenza to the Food and Drug Administration, World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control, Congressional Budget Office, Defense Science Board, several pharmaceutical companies, and the governments of Canada and Mexico.

2017 Festival – Measure, Understand, Control: Applications of Mathematics to Zika Virus Disease

This talk will show how mathematical techniques are applied to determine the number of Zika virus cases that are occurring (harder than you think!), estimate the risk of infection for causing severe outcomes like microcephaly, diagnose patients, and understand the spread of infection in order to control it.