Profiles in Nanomedicine Research: Raffaele Vardavas
Raffaele Vardavas, PhD
email: rvardava@rand.org
website
Mathematician; Professor, Pardee RAND Graduate School
RAND Corporation
1776 Main Street
Santa Monica, CA 90401-3208
Research
Infectious Diseases; Modeling and Simulation; Vaccination.
Raffaele Vardavas is an associate mathematician at RAND and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Prior to joining RAND, he was a post-doctorate researcher at UCLA in applied mathematics and later in bio-mathematics. His expertise is primarily in constructing and analyzing epidemic models for the spread of infectious disease using both population-level and agent-based models. Infectious disease projects that he has worked on include: modeling HIV and the projected impact of test and treat; modeling the threat of a smallpox outbreak and control policy alternatives that include both vaccination and the use of antivirals; modeling the coupled dynamics of seasonal influenza epidemics and agents’ behavior toward vaccination using an agent-based inductive game approach. His other modeling work in health includes: healthcare utilization forecasts; illicit drug use and cost to society; and the COMPARE health policy simulation project that models the impact of healthcare reforms. Non-health projects include constructing a game-theoretic evolutionary economics agent-based model on carbon markets to project the impact of different climate change policy alternatives.
Education
M.Sci. and Ph.D. in Physics, Imperial College London