ECE PhD student selected as finalist for IFAC Young Author Award
A PhD candidate in Purdue University’s Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering was selected as a finalist for the IFAC Young Author Award. Ciyuan Zhang was the lead author on the paper titled "A Networked Competitive Multi-Virus SIR Model: Analysis and Observability,” which was presented at the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) Conference on Networked Systems (NecSys 22). Zhang is a student of Philip E. Paré, assistant professor of ECE and a co-author on the paper.
The paper proposes a novel discrete-time multi-virus SIR (susceptible-infected-recovered) model that captures the spread of competing SIR epidemics over a population network. First, it provides a sufficient condition for the infection level of all the viruses over the networked model to converge to zero in exponential time. Second, it proposes an observation model which captures the summation of all the viruses' infection levels in each node, which represents the individuals who are infected by different viruses but share similar symptoms. Third, it presents a sufficient condition for the model to be locally observable. Finally, the paper proposes a Luenberger observer for the system state estimation and shows via simulations that the estimation error of the Luenberger observer converges to zero before the viruses die out.
The Young Author Award is intended to stimulate the involvement of young scientists and engineers in IFAC, as well as to recognize top-level contributions of the younger generation in the field and to support their careers. Zhang was one of six finalists.