Bioterrorism: Mathematical Modeling Applications in Homeland Security

Globalization and the possibility of bioterrorist acts have highlighted the pressing need for the development of theoretical and practical mathematical frameworks that may be useful in our systemic efforts to anticipate, prevent, and respond to acts of destabilization. Bioterrorism: Mathematical Modeling Applications in Homeland Security collects the detailed contributions of selected groups of experts from the fields of biostatistics, control theory, epidemiology, and mathematical biology who have engaged in the development of frameworks, models, and mathematical methods needed to address some of the pressing challenges posed by acts of terror. The ten chapters of this volume touch on a large range of issues in the subfields of biosurveillance, agroterrorism, bioterror response logistics, deliberate release of biological agents, impact assessment, and the spread of fanatic behaviors.

H.T. Banks is University Professor and Drexel Professor of Mathematics and Director of the Center for Research in Scientific Computation at North Carolina State University. He is also a Director of the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute in North Carolina. His research interests include computational methods, acoustics, elasticity, electromagnetics, fluid/structure interactions, smart materials, and biological sciences. In 2002, he received SIAM’s W.T. and Idalia Reid Prize in Mathematics for outstanding contributions to differential equations and control theory. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the Institute of Physics, serves on editorial boards of 11mathematics and engineering journals, and has published more than 300 papers.

C. Castillo-Chavez is a Professor of Biomathematics in the Departments of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology and of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at Cornell University and Director of the Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute. His research is in the areas of mathematical theoretical and computational epidemiology, ecology and evolutionary biology, social dynamics, demography, deliberate release of biological agents, applied dynamical systems, and stochastic processes. He has received national recognition, including two White House awards (1992 and 1997). He has co-authored or edited five books and over one hundred articles and was named the 2003 Ulam Scholar at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory.