Mitteilung - Preisträger für das Wintersemester 2024/25 - Dr. Contreras

Understanding the spread of infectious diseases like COVID-19 requires combining complex contagion dynamics with human contact patterns and complex societal reactions --- presenting a prime example of a complex living system with intricate feedback loops. Using tools from statistical physics, Seba Contreras identified novel mechanisms that explain why infection numbers can grow faster than exponential when test, trace, and isolate interventions fail, devised optimal mitigation strategies, and showed that even the endemic state can incur chaotic dynamics --- when the forces of infection, immunity, mitigation, and seasonality are balanced. His results have influenced public health policy during the COVID-19 pandemic and demonstrate that basic research is essential for pandemic preparedness.