My name is Marika Sartore. I am a PhD student in Physics at the University of Padua, collaborating with the Department of Molecular Medicine and Physics. I am part of the LIPh Lab.

I obtained my bachelor’s degree in Physics at the University of Padua, with a thesis focused on quantum cryptography. For my master’s I enrolled in Physics of Data at the same university. During this program I had the opportunity to study both data science and machine learning techniques and complex systems courses. During these years I developed a mounting interest in epidemiology, where theoretical physics meets medicine to explain epidemiological processes. Then I seized the opportunity to do an internship at the Institut Pierre Louis d’Epidémiologie et de Santé Publique, part of INSERM and Sorbonne University in Paris. During this period I worked on my master’s thesis project on modeling multi-pathogen systems, which was carried out in collaboration with the LIPh Lab.

I am currently doing my PhD under the supervision of Prof. Sandro Azaele and Prof. Chiara Poletto. My research project is about modeling the dynamics of interdependent epidemics, with the specific application to seasonal respiratory viruses. We developed a stochastic dynamical model able to describe the dynamics of multiple interacting viruses. The aim of our work is to investigate the relevance of the interactions in real-word scenarios and examine how the presence of other viruses in a system can affect the dynamics of a focal virus.