Tropical Diseases Modelling Network (TDModNet) is a new network for mathematical modellers and their collaborators based in the tropics and working on tropical infectious diseases. There are members with a range of research experience (from graduate student to professor) and expertise (mathematicians, biologists, epidemiologists, malariologists, policy makers, geneticists, bioinformaticists, clinicians). The aim is to provide a forum to build mathematical modelling capacity in the developing world in a self-sufficient way by exploiting the pre-existing structure of the network members.
The network will achieve this by:
- providing a forum for sharing ideas and discussing modelling research with other modellers
- supporting informal skills transfer
- providing formal training activities
- developing internal quality control systems for network research output
- nurturing new collaborations
- providing modelling support for public health policymaking
- raising the collective profile of the members
TDModNet had its first meeting during the Oxford Tropical Network (OTN) meeting (supported by the Wellcome Trust) in Vientiane in February 2011. TDModNet currently has a growing membership all based in the Tropics (roughly 50 members).