IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine - Q4 2021 - 20

are of particular interest for engineering researchers.
These directions include the analysis of epidemics on
dynamic networks, where the process is modeled as a
nonlinear time-invariant system or a complex stochastic
process, and the application of control-theoretical
tools to devise intervention policies to stop or mitigate
the spreading process. Particular attention should be
devoted to the analysis and control of stochastic epidemic
models, which are attracting attention in computational
epidemiology, physics, and network science,
but are still mostly overlooked in the systems and control
community.
Besides these research directions, we believe that
our scientific community can provide important advances
to other open problems of mathematical
epidemiology. A key challenge that the scientific community
is currently facing with the COVID-19 outbreak
is how to integrate the available data within the mathematical
models, that is, how to identify the model
parameters from clinical and epidemiological data,
which are often noisy and incomplete [149]. Different
optimization methods have been proposed to deal
with this problem. See, e.g., [150]. From a modeling
point of view, an important challenge for the ongoing
research, which we briefly mentioned in this survey,
is the inclusion of behavioral factors in the model
formulation. Game theory has emerged as a promising
modeling framework to model human decisionmaking
processes and has been utilized, for instance,
to capture the adoption of self-protective behaviors
[151], [152] and to characterize the decision whether
to vaccinate or not [153]-[155].
Acknowledgment
This work was partially supported by the European Research
Council (ERC-CoG-771687) and the Netherlands
Organization for Scientific Research (NWO-vidi-14134).
Lorenzo Zino (Member, IEEE) is a PostDoc
Researcher at the Faculty of Science
and Engineering, University of Groningen,
Groningen, The Netherlands,
since 2019. He received the Laurea degree
(B.Sc.) in Applied Mathematics
from Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy, in 2012, the Laurea
Magistrale degree (M.S.) in Mathematical Modeling
(summa cum laude) from Politecnico di Torino, in 2014,
and the Ph.D. in Pure and Applied Mathematics (with
honors) from Politecnico di Torino and Università di Torino
(joint doctorate program), in 2018. He was a Research
Fellow at Politecnico di Torino in 2018-19 and a
Visiting Research Assistant at New York University Tandon
School of Engineering, Brooklyn NY, US, in 2017-18
20
IEEE CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS MAGAZINE
and in 2019. His current research interests include modeling,
analysis, and control of dynamical processes over
complex networks, applied probability, network analysis,
and game theory.
Ming Cao (Senior Member, IEEE) received
the bachelor's and master's degrees
from Tsinghua University, Beijing,
China, in 1999 and 2002, respectively,
and the Ph.D. degree from Yale University,
New Haven, CT, USA, in 2007, all in
electrical engineering. Since 2016, he has been a Professor
of systems and control with the Engineering and
Technology Institute, the University of Groningen, The
Netherlands, where he started as a tenure-track Assistant
Professor in 2008. From September 2007 to August
2008, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate with
the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering,
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA. He
was a research intern during the summer of 2006 with
the Mathematical Sciences Department, the IBM T. J.
Watson Research Center, NY, USA. His research interests
include autonomous agents and multiagent systems,
complex networks, and decision-making processes.
Prof. Cao is the 2017 and inaugural recipient
of the Manfred Thoma Medal from the International
Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) and the 2016
recipient of the European Control Award sponsored by
the European Control Association. He is a Senior Editor
for Systems and Control Letters, and an Associate
Editor for IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control; he
was an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Circuits
and Systems, and IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine.
He is a Vice Chair of the IFAC Technical Committee
on Large-Scale Complex Systems.
References
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[2] W. Farr, " Influence of elevation on the fatality of cholera, " Quart. J.
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[3] J. Snow, On the Mode of the Communication of Cholera, 2nd ed. London:
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[4] W. H. Hamer, " The Milroy lectures on epidemic disease in England:
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no. 4305, pp. 569-574, 1906.
[5] W. O. Kermack, A. G. McKendrick, and G. T. Walker, " A contribution to
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[6] W. O. Kermack, A. G. McKendrick, and G. T. Walker, " Contributions
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[7] W. O. Kermack, A. G. McKendrick, and G. T. Walker, " Contributions
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Math. Phys. Character, vol. 141, no. 843, pp. 94-122, 1933.
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