Modelling and AI, Brussels 2026
Two talks, a panel, and a research exchange on infectious disease modelling and AI
Sam Abbott · samabbott.co.uk · github.com/seabbs · epinowcast.org · epiaware.org
The day
The workshop Combining Infectious Disease Modelling and AI: Methods and Communication is on Monday 14 September 2026 in the Learning Theatre, VUB campus Etterbeek (ground floor of the LIC Learning & Innovation Center ULB-VUB, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels). Times are Europe/Brussels. The event is free, and the workshop page has the programme.
09:00–09:30
Infectious disease modelling in the age of AI
Opening keynote
Ten years of outbreak modelling, integration of AI and outbreak modelling, and agentic AI and outbreak modelling.
13:40–14:10
Science communication with and under AI
Lecture
Government, the public and other scientists during COVID-19, software as communication, and what the person is for when writer and reader both have a language model.
15:20–16:15
Where do we go next? AI, communication, collaboration
Panel discussion
With Andres Algaba, Karolien Poels and Marie-Cécile Dupas. Moderated by Philippe Beutels.
15 Sep, 09:45–10:15
Research exchange
VUB AI group and UH-UA SIMID group
The groups I work with and what I work on, then composable models, recent delays work and the workflow, at a morning of short talks at the AI Experience Centre.
My JuliaCon 2026 bio
🤖 The following was drafted by @seabbs-bot, who has a very suspiciously high opinion of me, so take it with a pinch of salt.
I am an Assistant Professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. I did my PhD in the optimal usage of the BCG vaccine, transitioning to work on real-time modelling of infectious disease outbreaks on the 3rd of January 2020. Four days later, I switched to work on what was then known as 2019-NCoV. I did early work on the size and scale of the initial outbreak, tracking transmissions in different countries, and exploring the potential role of different interventions. Throughout the pandemic, I ran a dashboard that was used by over a million people. I also provided estimates, forecasts, and analyses weekly to the UK government advisory bodies. I developed the tools and methods we used into open source software and these were used by upwards of 30 public health agencies around the world. I have continued to work in this area with a focus on improving tools and methods used both in research and in public health practice. I have recently transitioned to Julia for my work and am exploring how to propagate Julia based tools to the users of our current tooling and to the wider infectious disease modelling community.
Other recent work you might like
Outbreaks
- BVDOutbreakSize. A live joint model of the 2026 DRC outbreak of Ebola disease caused by Bundibugyo virus, building on the Imperial (McCabe et al.) report. Source.
- Andes virus line list analysis. Joint estimation of the incubation period, transmission timing and \(R_t\) for the Epuyén hantavirus outbreak.
- The epiforecasts COVID-19 dashboard. Daily \(R_t\) estimates and forecasts, 2020 to 2022.
Software
- EpiNow2. Real-time \(R_t\) estimation, used by public health agencies.
- epinowcast. Nowcasting and delay estimation, with a community forum and seminar series.
- scoringutils. Forecast evaluation, used by the forecast hubs.
- EpiAware. Composable infectious disease modelling in Julia.
Papers and talks
- How I am LLM. What coding agents do and do not do in a research workflow.
- A workflow for infectious disease modelling. How we think models should be built and checked.
- What we want from an approach. The design considerations behind composable modelling.
- JuliaCon 2026. Three talks on composable modelling in Julia.
- My Google Scholar.
The prompts page has the brief I wrote for this site and the steers that followed.