Harvard Science Book Talk: Adam Kucharski, in conversation with William Hanage, "The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread—And Why They Stop"

Date: 

Monday, September 13, 2021, 12:00pm

Where Online: https://www.harvard.com/event/virtual_event_adam_kucharski/
When September 13, 2021 @5:00PM
Organization/Sponsor Harvard Division of Science, Harvard Library, and Harvard Book Store
Speaker(s) Adam Kucharski (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine);
William Hanage (Harvard School of Public Health)
Cost free
Contact Info science_lectures@fas.harvard.edu

Adam Kucharski book cover and photo

These days, whenever anything spreads, whether it's a YouTube fad or a political rumor, we say it went viral. But how does virality actually work? In The Rules of Contagion, epidemiologist Adam Kucharski explores topics including gun violence, online manipulation, and, of course, outbreaks of disease to show how much we get wrong about contagion, and how astonishing the real science is.

Why did the president retweet a Mussolini quote as his own? Why do financial bubbles take off so quickly? Why are disinformation campaigns so effective? And what makes the emergence of new illnesses—such as MERS, SARS, or the coronavirus disease COVID-19—so challenging? By uncovering the crucial factors driving outbreaks, we can see how things really spread—and what we can do about it.

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Adam Kucharski is an associate professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and an award-winning science writer. A mathematician by training, his work on global epidemics has included Ebola, Zika and COVID-19, and he has produced real-time analysis for multiple governments and health agencies. He is a TED senior fellow and his popular science articles have appeared in publications including The ObserverFinancial Times and Wired. He has an MMath in Mathematics from the University of Warwick and a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Cambridge.

Dr. Bill Hanage is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology in the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. His research and teaching focus on the epidemiology of infectious disease and the evolution of infectious agents. He received his PhD from Imperial College London. Dr. Hanage has made seminal contributions to the study of diverse pathogens, both bacteria and viruses, and has a special interest in evolution in response to interventions such as vaccination or antimicrobials. His research on the current pandemic has included modeling transmission in healthcare and the impact of vaccination in the context of variants, how fatality rates vary with age, and how the virus evolves in individual hosts. His awards include the Fleming Prize from the Microbiology Society and a young investigator award from the American Society for Microbiology. He has published more than scientific 170 articles and book chapters and is a regular contributor to popular media aiming to improve public understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

For more information and videos of Harvard Science Book Talks, see https://science.fas.harvard.edu/book-talks