16 NOV 2026 (MON) 14:00-15:00
Geography Distinguished Seminar Series
Why here? Mapping epidemics from HIV to mental health
Date: 09 OCT 2026 (Monday)
Time: 14:00-15:00 (HKT)
Venue: Social Sciences Chamber, Faculty of Social Sciences, 11/F, The Jockey Club Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
Mode: Hybrid
Via Zoom: Zoom link will be provided upon successful registration
Registration link: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=109902
Abstract:
Where a disease concentrates, and why there, can tell us where to act. For years, HIV was mostly mapped by country or region, and its local geography was poorly explored. In this talk, I tell the story of how my lab set out to change that, and how the same spatial questions have guided our work across very different health problems. We move from HIV, which spreads through sexual networks, to COVID-19, which spread through the air, to the opioid crisis, which does not pass between people but still moves like an epidemic, and finally to mental health, which does not move at all but grows out of places. Along the way, I show how hotspot detection, high-resolution mapping, spatial molecular epidemiology and space-time analysis revealed patterns that national averages hid, and what those patterns mean for public health action. I close with new work with colleagues at the University of Hong Kong on COVID-19 in the United States and on women's mental health in Nepal.
Professor Diego F. Cuadros
Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cincinnati
Diego F. Cuadros is a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Cincinnati, where he directs the Digital Epidemiology Laboratory at Digital Futures. He is an epidemiologist and disease ecologist who combines spatial analysis, mathematical modeling and digital data to understand where diseases concentrate, why, and what that means for public health. His work spans HIV and other infectious diseases in sub-Saharan Africa, COVID-19 and substance use in the United States, and mental health in South Africa and Nepal. He earned his Ph.D. in Biology at the University of Kentucky and his B.S. in Biology at the National University of Colombia. Before joining the University of Cincinnati in 2016, he was a postdoctoral research associate at Weill Cornell Medicine in Qatar and a research fellow at the Africa Health Research Institute in South Africa. His lab also studies how AI agents can work as partners in research.
