Assistant Professor of Mathematics Christina Edholm explained how mathematical modeling is used to study, predict, and prevent disease outbreaks on the Academic Minute podcast, on Inside Higher Ed. She also discussed the importance of the role of “superspreaders,” the term for those who transmit infections to an unusually high number of other people, in an outbreak’s impact on the population. “We are studying a variety of models to identify characteristics of superspreaders in an outbreak, which could help reduce the number of overall infections,” she said. “Some of the key factors we consider are time to peak infection, size of peak infection, time to an outbreak, number of deaths, and the probability of an outbreak. We hope to gain more insight into disease dynamics and outbreaks, leading to management solutions.”