The mathematics of the pandemic

Ralph McDougall is a Stellenbosch University second-year Electrical Engineering student who has a keen interest in understanding and solving problems using mathematical techniques. He has developed a tool that provides a visualisation of the number of COVID-19 cases in some countries of interest. The goal was to provide an objective, condensed daily report showing the spread of the virus, which he could use for verification of trends reported in the daily media. He believes that a better understanding of virus modelling will help to reduce the spread of misinformation.

Dr. Vaibhav Vaish is a researcher (specialising in Algebraic Geometry) and a teacher of mathematics at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali . Having had a long convoluted journey to the subject (that began with the mathematical olympiads, but passed through electrical/electronics engineering, computer science, and briefly even the world of finance) he has an off-centric, perhaps eccentric view of the subject. He will be talking generally about why mathematics is a science, on the boundary-less nature of the subject, and more specifically about what it can mean during a pandemic.