Mathematical Modelling of Biological Processes
The research group on Mathematical Modelling of Biological Processes is interested in mathematical biology with special focus on infectious disease dynamics and control. Adopting mechanistic approaches, they develop a deeper quantitative understanding of how system behavior emerges from the interaction of its components, and how processes at one biological scale affect patterns observed at another. At the evolution-ecology-epidemiology interface, this research links processes at the individual and the population level. Data-driven mathematical models are applied to a variety of topics, including microbial ecology and competition dynamics, within-host interactions in health and disease, vaccination effects in host-pathogen systems and antibiotic resistance.
They study and quantify the role of host immune defences for controlling bacterial infections and for mitigating the ascent of drug-resistance during treatment.This research combines mathematical analysis with computer simulations, as well as tools from population dynamics, stochastic processes, and parameter inference problems, relevant to different areas of biology. The insights from mathematical models can have practical implications for biomedical settings and public health policy. This group currently collaborates with several teams in Portugal (IMM, U. Lisbon) and abroad, including France (University of Tours) and the USA (University of Tennessee, University of Michigan).
Publications
- Sten Madec and Erida Gjini (2020) Predicting N-strain coexistence from co-colonization interactions: epidemiology meets ecology and the replicator equation.. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology 82:142
- Martins, A.D. and Gjini E (2020) Modeling Competitive Mixtures With the Lotka-Volterra Framework for More Complex Fitness Assessment Between Strains. Front. Microbiol. 11: 572487
- Gjini, E. (2017) Geographic variation in pneumococcal vaccine efficacy estimated from dynamic modeling of epidemiological data post-PCV7.. Sci Rep. 7:3049
- Gavião, M., Dionisio, F., Gjini, E. (2017) Transmission fitness in co-colonization and the persistence of bacterial pathogens.. Bull Math Biol. 79(9):2068–2087
- Gjini, E., Madec, S. (2016) A slow-fast dynamic decomposition links neutral and non-neutral coexistence in interacting multi-strain pathogens.. Theor Ecol-Neth. 10(1):129-141
- Gjini, E., Gomes, M.G.M. (2016) Expanding vaccine efficacy estimation with dynamic models fitted to cross-sectional prevalence data post-licensure.. Epidemics 14:71-82
- Gjini, E., Valente, C., Sa-Leao, R., Gomes, M.G.M. (2016) How direct competition shapes coexistence and vaccine effects in multi-strain pathogen systems.. J Theor Biol. 388:50-60
- Gjini, E., Brito, P.H. (2016) Integrating antimicrobial therapy with host immunity to fight drug-resistant infections: Classical vs. adaptive treatment.. PLoS Comput Biol. 12(4):e100485
- Pessoa, D., Mendes, C.S.M., Lopes J.S., Gjini, E., Ceña, B., Codeco, C.T., Gomes, M.G.M. (2014) Unveiling time in dose-response models to infer host susceptibility to pathogens.. PLoS Comput Biol. 10(8):e1003773
- Gjini, E., Haydon, D., Barry, J., Cobbold, C. (2012) The impact of mutation and gene conversion on the local diversification of antigen genes in African Trypanosomes.. Mol Biol Evol. 29 (11):3321-3331
- Gjini, E., Haydon, D., Barry, J., Cobbold, C. (2010) Critical interplay between parasite differentiation, host immunity, and antigenic variation in Trypanosome infections.. Am Nat. 176 (4):424-439