Gotthard-Franz-Str. 3, Geb. 50.31, Raum 107, 76131 Karlsruhe

26 Juni 2023, 9:45 Uhr

Die Forschung von Prof. Clara Stegehuis befasst sich mit den Gebieten der Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie und stochastischen Netzwerken. Ihre wissenschaftlichen Untersuchungen sind von Anwendungen der Netzwerkforschung, Physik und Informatik inspiriert.

Abstract:
In real-world networks, nodes often cluster into groups, also called communities. But what is the influence of these local structures on the speed at which an epidemic spreads? Interestingly, we show that community structures can both enforce as well as inhibit epidemic processes. Our models further show that the exact internal structures of communities barely influence the behavior of percolation processes across networks.  We then investigate to what extent contact tracing can reduce the final size of an epidemic, which strongly depends on the network structure. In contrast to previous findings, contact tracing is not necessarily more effective on networks with heterogeneous degrees. We also show that network clustering influences the effectiveness of the tracing process in a non-trivial way:
depending on the infectiousness parameter, contact tracing on clustered networks may either be more, or less efficient than on networks without clustering.