Hal Caswell is Professor of Mathematical Demography and Ecology at the University of Amsterdam. He is awarded the 11th Distinguished Lorentz Fellowship and will hold this position for the academic year 2019/20.
Research Project
Population Health: a new comprehensive framework
The research project will develop demographic models of healthy longevity, disease prevalence and incidence, causes of death, and occupancy of health states. The models will be combine population projection matrices, Markov chains with rewards, multistate life tables, and sensitivity analysis with applications to human and animal populations. I will explore connections to epidemiological models of disease transmission, and to projections of future population growth and structure (of humans responding to trends in mortality and fertility, or of animals responding to climate change) over decadal time scales. At shorter time scales, the models will be applicable to medical demography where calculations are focused on the progression of specific diseases within an individual lifespan, often following treatments.