Open Computational Problems in HIV Epidemiology

Published in Workshop on the Future of Algorithms in Biology (FAB) 2018, 2018

Recommended citation: Moshiri N (2018). "Open Computational Problems in HIV Epidemiology." Workshop on the Future of Algorithms in Biology (FAB) 2018. Talk.

It is believed that Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was introduced to the United States in the 1970s. During the 1990s, HIV spread rapidly throughout the United States. Due to advances in medicine, numerous treatments have been developed to suppress HIV in patients (though no cure exists), and due to intervention efforts by epidemiologists via frequent affordable screening and treatment dispersion, the epidemic has become largely contained in the developed world. However, the virus is still rampant in much of the developing world, namely in Sub-Saharan Africa. Due to recent advancements in sequencing, it is now fairly common to sequence viral samples from patients when they receive treatment, and the obtainment of these sequences opens the door for a wide range of computational applications. In my flash talk, I will present some open problems in the field of HIV epidemiology (original biological/epidemiological problems as well as their formal computational problem formulations), and I will discuss various methods that exist that attempt to solve the aforementioned problems. I hope to help define the future of algorithms in biology by presenting an overview of the computational problems that exist in HIV epidemiology so computational researchers will be able to develop novel algorithms to solve these problems in the years to come.