Dr. Vittoria Colizza is Research Director at INSERM & Sorbonne Université in the Pierre Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health (IPLESP). After a PhD in Theoretical Physics (International School of Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy, 2004), she worked at Indiana University (US, 2004-2007) as post-doc and visiting Assistant Professor, and then joined ISI Foundation (Turin, Italy, 2007-2010) as senior researcher, after being awarded an ERC Starting Grant in Life Sciences in 2007. In 2011 Colizza joined INSERM in Paris where she currently leads the EPIcx lab (Epidemics in complex environments, www.epicx-lab.com) within the Equipe ‘Communicable Diseases Surveillance and Modelling’. Her research focuses on human and animal epidemics (COVID-19 pandemic, 2009 H1N1 pandemic, MERS-CoV, Ebola, rabies, foot-and-mouth disease, bovine brucellosis) to gather epidemic context awareness and provide risk assessment analyses for preparedness, mitigation, and control. Her work is based on mathematical, computational and digital approaches integrating data on mobility and contacts between hosts (air travel, commuting, cell phone data, RFID sensors). Colizza is heavily involved in the COVID-19 health crisis since its start in January 2020 (see https://www.epicx-lab.com/covid-19.html). Her work informs public health authorities in the different phases of the pandemic. Colizza coordinated several national and European projects, and received a number of awards.

COVID-19 pandemic is pushing the health and socio-economic challenges of our modern world to unprecedented levels. The interplay of behavioral aspects with restrictive measures imposed by authorities and their economic impacts highlights the vulnerability of our society against this virus. Combining epidemiological data on COVID-19 pandemic and mobility data extracted from mobile phone traces in Japan, we will develop statistical, mathematical, and computational models to explore this interplay and evaluate its impact on the pandemic spread in the country.

• 2017 : Member of the I7 Innovators’ Strategic Advisory Board on People-Centered Innovation for the Italian Government for G7

• 2015 : Google ‘Solve for X’ Scientist

• 2011-2014 : Young Advisor to the Vice President of the European Commission Mrs. Neelie Kroes for the new Digital Agenda for Europe

• 2011 : Young Scientist selected by the French Academy of Sciences for a policy-science partnership with members of the French Parliament