Gotthard-Franz-Str. 3, Bldg. 50.31, room 107, 76131 Karlsruhe

26 June 2023, 9:45

The research of Prof. Clara Stegehuis of the University of Twente is located in the areas of probability theory and stochastic networks. Her scientific investigations are inspired by applications in network science, physics and computer science.

Abstract:
In real-world networks, nodes often cluster into groups, also called communities. But what is the influence of these local structures on the speed at which an epidemic spreads? Interestingly, we show that community structures can both enforce as well as inhibit epidemic processes. Our models further show that the exact internal structures of communities barely influence the behavior of percolation processes across networks.  We then investigate to what extent contact tracing can reduce the final size of an epidemic, which strongly depends on the network structure. In contrast to previous findings, contact tracing is not necessarily more effective on networks with heterogeneous degrees. We also show that network clustering influences the effectiveness of the tracing process in a non-trivial way:
depending on the infectiousness parameter, contact tracing on clustered networks may either be more, or less efficient than on networks without clustering.