This innovative textbook brings together modern concepts in mathematical epidemiology, computational modeling, physics-based simulation, data science, and machine learning to understand one of the most significant problems of our current time, the outbreak dynamics and outbreak control of COVID-19. It teaches the relevant tools to model and simulate nonlinear dynamic systems in view of a global pandemic that is acutely relevant to human health.

If you are a student, educator, basic scientist, or medical researcher in the natural or social sciences, or someone passionate about big data and human health: This book is for you! It serves as a textbook for undergraduates and graduate students, and a monograph for researchers and scientists. It can be used in the mathematical life sciences suitable for courses in applied mathematics, biomedical engineering, biostatistics, computer science, data science, epidemiology, health sciences, machine learning, mathematical biology, numerical methods, and probabilistic programming. This book is a personal reflection on the role of data-driven modeling during the COVID-19 pandemic, motivated by the curiosity to understand it.

Ellen Kuhl is the Walter B. Reinhold Professor in the School of Engineering and Robert Bosch Chair of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. She is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and, by courtesy, Bioengineering. She received her PhD from the University of Stuttgart in 2000 and her Habilitation from the University of Kaiserslautern in 2004. Her area of expertise is Living Matter Physics, the design of theoretical and computational models to simulate and predict the behavior of living systems. Ellen has published more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and edited two books; she is an active reviewer for more than 20 journals at the interface of engineering and medicine and an editorial board member of seven international journals in her field. She is a founding member of the Living Heart Project, a translational research initiative to revolutionize cardiovascular science through realistic simulation with 400 participants from research, industry, and medicine from 24 countries. Ellen is the current Chair of the US National Committee on Biomechanics and a Member-Elect of the World Council of Biomechanics. She is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and of the American Institute for Mechanical and Biological Engineering. She received the National Science Foundation Career Award in 2010, was selected as Midwest Mechanics Seminar Speaker in 2014,