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Title: James Holland Jones: Center For Population Dynamics Colloquium

Speaker: James Holland Jones

Type: SHESC Colloquium

Date: Oct. 22, 2010 11 a.m.

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Summary

James Holland is a professor at Stanford University and deals with epidemics

and how to control them, in which he talked deeply about during his lecture. First, he

started off by telling the audience about his eureka moment when he realized that he

could use graphs to show the probability of catching a disease, which could then lead to

an epidemic. He then translated these graphs into social networks to show exactly how

diseases spread. From the use of complex webs, he showed just how easily people are

connected and how fast an epidemic can happen.

In addition to network webs, he demonstrated how important population structure

is when dealing with a disease. An outbreak in non-structured populations is completely

random, creating one large bell curve. On the other hand, an outbreak in a structured

population has little bell curves stretched over a period of time. The difference between

the populations is groups. In the structured population, there is a hierarchy of people

which translates to a bell curve for every level of the hierarchy.

Because he knows so much about an outbreak, Holland can now pin point the

most efficient way to distribute a vaccine. He mentioned the many ways of vaccinating:

random, degree, betweenness, etc. and stated that the most effective way would be to

vaccinate the people that bridge communities. This also works with STDs, which he

specializes in.

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New Insights

Although sometimes the language was over my head, I was able to follow the

majority of the lecture which made it interesting. I enjoyed it because most of the

information Holland was sharing seemed complicated, but once I understood it, it was

truly common sense. I was intrigued by how important a persons network is when

controlling diseases, especially STDs. I liked how he analyzed certain types of

relationships and then explained how they pertained to different diseases. For example,

there are certain ways of spreading an STD and certain ways of spreading the flu. The

flu typically requires less physical contact. I also liked the explanation of a structured

population vs. a non-structured. This was also something that was complicated but had

a simple idea behind it. Holland then impressed me when he used all of this information

to express how to vaccinate a population that has faced an epidemic. I thought it made

perfect sense when he told the audience to concentrate on the people whom connect

different networks.