Lorenzo Zino - Politecnico di Torino - CONTROLLING SPREADING PROCESSES IN NETWORKS
The study of spreading processes on networks has improved our understanding of how ideas and innovations, as well as epidemics and mutations diffuse. The increased awareness of such spreading mechanisms has paved the way for the design of effective control techniques, with valuable potential societal benefits.
In this seminar, Lorenzo Zino will adopt the framework of spreading processes on networks to deal with a hot issue in epidemic control: the eradication of mosquito-borne diseases through a new technique. In details, teams of researchers have recently created harmless genetically modified organisms, which can be introduced in a geographic region to substitute the dangerous mosquitoes without altering the environmental equilibria. The spreading-like approach to model evolutionary phenomena allows for a precise analysis of the system. Specifically, it clarifies how the topology of the geographic region and the control policy used to introduce the mutants influence the time and the effort needed to achieve global eradication of the disease-spreading mosquitoes. Based on these results, a feedback control policy to speed up the process is presented and discussed. Validation results on a case study conclude the talk.
This research program is in collaboration with prof. Fabio Fagnani and prof. Giacomo Como.
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