Raffaele Vardavas

Biography

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. Other modeling work in Health include healthcare utilization forecasts; illicit drug utilization and cost to society; the COMPARE health policy simulation project that models the impact of the health 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. Vardavas has a Ph.D. in physics from Imperial College London.