Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, infectious disease modeling has been a key tool for public health agencies and other institutions to understand and predict transmission. Resources, modeling efforts, and expertise were rapidly pulled together to meet the demand from public health agencies and other institutions for location-specific modeling to understand transmission. However, this demand often exceeded the capacity of existing modeling groups and resulted in the development and interpretation of models with no previous experience in the field.

This project aims to build upon the efforts from the COVID-19 pandemic by establishing a permanent center for applied infectious disease modeling through a collection of projects and activities that:

1) accelerate the applied use of modeling in public health and

2) develop a workforce capable of implementing these techniques, interpreting the results, and communicating them with the public health community and public. 

Projects and activities involved in meeting these objectives include supporting existing modeling efforts such as the Scenario Modeling Hub, developing online courses, hosting workshops, and providing applied opportunities for academic modelers.