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How maths, science and law fight Covid-19 – free UC public talk

What do a mathematician, a chemist, an epidemiologist and a law expert have in common? These University of Canterbury academics are all involved in vital aspects of the global fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

Join them on Wednesday night, 11 August, at the University of Canterbury’s Ilam campus for this special 90-minute, livestreamed event, Maths, science and law in the fight against Covid-19. UC’s Head of Mathematics and Statistics, Professor Clemency Montelle, will host the free event, which will conclude with an audience Q&A session.

Professor Michael Plank, Mathematics and Statistics, UC Engineering
Mathematical modelling has played a key part in understanding and responding to the pandemic in countries around the world, including New Zealand. In the early stages of the pandemic, a group of award-winning researchers at the University of Canterbury and Te Pūnaha Matatini developed models to estimate the scale of the health impacts if the virus were allowed to spread unchecked, helping to prompt government action. Subsequently, these and other models have been used to help inform the New Zealand government response in areas such as contact tracing, border management, testing, and outbreak control. In this talk Professor Plank will give an overview of how these models work, some of the ways they’ve been used over the last year, and what they can and can’t tell us about the future.

Michael Plank is a medal-winning Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at UC and a Principal Investigator at Te Pūnaha Matatini, New Zealand’s Centre of Research Excellence in Complex Systems and Data Analytics. He obtained his BSc (Hons) in Mathematics from the University of Bristol and his PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Leeds. He started at UC as a postdoctoral research fellow in 2004. Professor Plank is an expert in mathematical modelling of complex biological and social systems at multiple scales. His expertise includes ecological and social networks, population dynamics, epidemiological models, size-structured marine ecosystems, collective cell behaviour, and intracellular dynamics.

Professor John Hopkins, UC School of Law
“Natural” disasters are often anything but. They are human and social events caused by the intersection of hazards and the vulnerabilities of communities and individuals. Covid-19 is no different – the virus was not the disaster; the social and health impacts were. It comes as no surprise, given the social nature of disaster, that law is at the heart of our response. Professor John Hopkins will briefly explore some key legal issues that arose as a result of the Covid-19 response, from the legality of lockdown to the balancing of individual rights and community health. He will share his thoughts on what worked well from New Zealand’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic and what we can do better when the next disaster strikes.

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