This book describes stochastic epidemic models and methods for statistically analyzing them. It is aimed at statisticians, biostatisticians, and biomathematicians.

Focussing on stochastic models for the spread of infectious diseases in a human population, this book is the outcome of a two-week ICPAM/CIMPA school on "Stochastic models of epidemics" which took place in Ziguinchor, Senegal, December 5-16, 2015. The text is divided into four parts, each based on one of the courses given at the school: homogeneous models (Tom Britton and Etienne Pardoux), two-level mixing models (David Sirl and Frank Ball), epidemics on graphs (Viet Chi Tran), and statistics for epidemic models (Catherine Laredo). The CIMPA school was aimed at PhD students and Post Docs in the mathematical sciences. Parts (or all) of this book can be used as the basis for traditional or individual reading courses on the topic. For this reason, examples and exercises (some with solutions) are provided throughout.

Mathematical modeling is critical to our understanding of how infectious diseases spread at the individual and population levels. This book gives readers the necessary skills to correctly formulate and analyze mathematical models in infectious disease epidemiology, and is the first treatment of the subject to integrate deterministic and stochastic models and methods.

"Mathematical Tools for Understanding Infectious Disease Dynamics" fully explains how to translate biological assumptions into mathematics to construct useful and consistent models, and how to use the biological interpretation and mathematical reasoning to analyze these models. It shows how to relate models to data through statistical inference, and how to gain important insights into infectious disease dynamics by translating mathematical results back to biology. This comprehensive and accessible book also features numerous detailed exercises throughout; full elaborations to all exercises are provided. Covers the latest research in mathematical modeling of infectious disease epidemiology Integrates deterministic and stochastic approaches Teaches skills in model construction, analysis, inference, and interpretation Features numerous exercises and their detailed elaborations Motivated by real-world applications throughout