Agent-Based Models (ABMS) are artificial societies of individual software people whose interactions generate large-scale social patterns—of violence, of inequality, and of disease.

Epstein is a recognised pioneer in this method. In the sphere of Public Health, he has used ABMs to model pandemics from the 1918 Spanish Flu, to Bioterror Smallpox, to Ebola, to COVID-19. With stunning animations, he demonstrates his modelling on scales ranging from a children’s school playground to the 6.5 billon agent planetary-scale model funded by the US National Institutes of Health. Throughout, he emphasizes the role of human behaviour in shaping epidemic dynamics, including the problematic multiple waves observed in historical pandemics and most recently, in COVID-19.

This was a joint event with INET Oxford