Francesco Di Lauro

Intro

I am a theoretical physicist with strong interest in complex systems and infectious disease dynamics. You can find what I currently work on here. This is a short summary of my academic CV:

• Masters in theoretical physics at University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, 2018
• PhD in Mathematics at University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, 2021
• Postdoc at University of Oxford, Big Data Institute 2021 - now

Find me on Linkedin, Twitter, and Youtube.

You can find an updated list of my publications on my google scholar page.

Beside my academic interests, I am into board games, I contributed to create a boardgame society in Pisa, and I enjoy playing Saxophone and Electric Guitar. I am also a big nerd in general (videogames, miniatures, coding, electronics... you name it!)

Work

I mostly work on HIV epidemic spreading in Sub-Saharan Africa, mainly on the quantitative analysis of the data from the HPTN01 (PopART) trial , within the PANGEA consortium. My research focuses on understanding how sexual partnership networks in sub-Saharan Africa are shaping the dynamics of HIV spreading, and how to tailor public policy interventions aimed at reducing the burden of HIV on the population based on this knowledge; for example, what is the role of the hard-to-reach individuals who may have a high number of sexual partners, and therefore may be at high risk of acquiring/transmitting HIV? How much would a strategy focused on this sub-population reduce the overall incidence, compared to different choices? Answering such questions involves working with big data*, developing/maintaining epidemic models**, and collaborating with other members of the statistics and modelling team, as well as researchers around the World. I am also trying to bring in information gathered from Phylogenetic analysis into epidemic models, a task that is challenging but necessary, as recent advances in the field are giving us an unprecedented flux of high-quality data that are of paramount importance in reconstructing the transmission dynamics. Occasionally, I collaborate with other researchers on other diseases related projects, mainly COVID-19.

*In particular, sexual behaviour surveys and health-related data

**I am one of the main developers of PopART-IBM.

You can find an updated list of my publications on my google scholar page.

News

Latest out!: check here for a cool collaborative project that combines phylogeny, network theory and epidemic modelling to estimate the pandemic potential of emergent variants from limited/noisy data.

Contact

• Twitter
• GitHub

Elements

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