Human Mobility Pattern and Network Epidemiology
Analyze data on human movement from fine-grained individual trajectories to commuting and air travel flows, develop models to simulate disease spread, evaluate the effectiveness of various intervention strategies, and contribute to the development of more effective public health policies and strategies for controlling the spread of infectious diseases.
Selected Publications
Universal spatial inflation of human mobility
(Under review) 2023.
Zhong, L., Dong, L., Wang, Q., Song, C., Gao, J.
[paper] [code]
Identifying the shifting sources predicts the dynamics of COVID-19 in US
Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science 32.3 (2022).
Wang, Y., Zhong, L., Du, J., Gao, J., Wang, Q.
[paper] [code]
Vaccination and three non-pharmaceutical interventions determine the dynamics of COVID-19 at 381 metropolitan statistical areas in the US.
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2022).
Zhong, L., Diagne, M., Wang, Q., Gao, J.
Country distancing increase reveals the effectiveness of travel restrictions in stopping COVID-19 transmission.
Communications Physics 4, 121 (2021) [cover story].
Zhong, L., Diagne, M., Wang, W., Gao, J.
[paper] [code]
Optimizing HIV Interventions for Mulitplex Social Networks Via Partition-Based Random Search.
IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, vol. 48, no. 12, (2018).
Zhang, Q., Zhong, L., Gao, S., Li, X.
[paper] [code]
[paper] [code]
System Resilience/Adaptability to Disaster
How a socio-technical/healthcare system adapts to disaster to gain better resilience is largely unknown. Utilize performance-based and network-based methods, and long time-range data to measure the system's behavior to adapt to various disasters, such as pandemics and extreme events (climate change), which are in different severity and duration. The system of concerns includes healthcare systems and other social-technical systems.
Fund
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Funded by COVID-19 Research Accelerator Grants (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)
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Title: Harness network science to reduce treatment resource disparities and social disadvantages
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People: Lu Zhong (PI), Jianxi Gao (PI)
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Assess the impact of disruptions (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic) on healthcare systems, examine how the disruption contributes to health disparities, and develop evidence-based strategies for improving access to healthcare services and resources, and for building more resilient healthcare systems by leveraging analysis on electronic health record (EHR) data analysis, modeling, and simulations.
Publications
Healthcare System Resilience and Adaptability to Pandemic Disruptions in the United States.
Nature Medicine (2024).
Zhong, L., Lopez, D., Pei, S., Gao, J.
Patient flow networks absorb healthcare stress during pandemic crises.
(working paper) 2024.
Zhong, L., et al.
[paper] [code]
Strengthening Healthcare Equity and Resilience: The Impact of Physician Collaboration during Pandemics
(working paper) 2024.
Zhong, L., et al.
[paper] [code]
Publication
Reinforcement learning enhances system adaptation to recurrent disruptions from crisis.
(working paper) 2024.
Zhong, L., et al.
[paper] [code]
AI+System Resilience
Utilize data-driven approaches (AI-powered analytical tools) to develop mechanistic models that can capture the behavior of complex systems and networks, understand the system's structure and dynamics, and apply these approaches to healthcare systems to improve decision-making and optimize system performance.
Data Source
