The Scenario Modeling Hub (SMH) held its annual meeting from September 18-20, 2024, in Los Angeles, hosted by CAIS Associate Director Ajitesh Srivastava at the USC Information Sciences Institute. This event brought together leading academic researchers and public health officials to reflect on the past year’s progress and discuss the future of infectious disease modeling to support policymaking.
Over three days, attendees participated in engaging sessions focused on SMH’s contributions to COVID-19, influenza, and RSV scenario modeling. Highlights included a keynote lunch talk by Yolanda Gil on computational workflows for disease propagation prediction, working group discussions on future research priorities, presentations on the scientific foundations of SMH, and a panel of health officials.
During the meetings, attendees shared insights, identified opportunities for new research directions, and solidified plans to further support public health decision-making through scenario modeling. Events like this one are part of what makes SMH’s initiative different from others: SMH is committed to answering specific policy questions by projecting long-term outbreak trajectories and how these change under different assumptions and decisions.
Dr. Srivastava, in his opening remarks, reflected, “Last year, I was thinking of retiring from SMH due to the burnout from the effort I had put in on COVID-19. A year has passed, and the SMH has continued to support me and demonstrate public health impact. And now, I am working on COVID-19, Influenza, and RSV, and hosting this annual meeting. In the words of Al Pacino from Godfather III – ‘Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.'”
We thank everyone who contributed to the event’s success and look forward to seeing more impacts of SMH’s critical work on supporting decision-making under uncertainty using infectious disease modeling.
