Understanding the factors contributing to infectious disease dynamics in hosts is one of the most important foundations for the study of disease ecology. Models of infectious disease dynamics can be formulated using systems of ordinary differential equations (ODEs), and can be programmed in the R language to investigate the influence of various parameters on the ability of a disease to invade, cause outbreaks, and determine the overall impact of an infectious agent on host populations. This workshop is intended for anyone interested in learning the basics of modeling infectious disease dynamics using R.

In this half day workshop, participants will learn how to program basic ODEs and examine disease dynamics for various disease systems using R (freely available from http://www.cran.r-project.org/) to better understand how factors interact to enhance or reduce the rate of disease progression through a host population. During the session, we will review mathematical and computational tools that are useful for modeling the dynamics of infectious disease, explore relationships between model variables, and discuss strategies for parameter estimation from data. 

Participants should have a basic knowledge of R (e.g. assigning variables, loading packages, running commands); we will review necessary computational concepts (e.g. writing for loops and functions) at the beginning of the session.  Prior experience with ODEs is not required. Each participant should bring their own laptop with R and RStudio, and the package deSolve installed.