Webinar Organized by the Department of Mathematics at the University of Bahrain

Since the declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic by the WHO in March 2020, the literature witnessed with a variety of relevant researches and several approaches have been proposed. As the national university in the Kingdom of Bahrain, the University of Bahrain participated in this surge to raise awareness of this hot topic. The Department of Mathematics at the University of Bahrain recently organized a webinar entitled “Mathematical Modelling of COVID-19 and the Safe Way to Return to Universities and Schools”. The webinar was held on Monday 21st of December 2020 via Microsoft Teams.

Dr. Abdulla Eid, the chairperson of the Department of Mathematics, confirmed that this webinar is an event among a series of activities that the department intends to organize to emphasize the importance of mathematics in handling real-world problems of which COVID-19 is just an example. He added that the current webinar specifically aims at reinforcing the sustainable development goads SDGs 3, 4, 17.

It is worth mentioning that the event was public and opened to all interested people with a free registration. The webinar was delivered by Prof. Alberto Gandolfi, a professor of Probability and Mathematical Statistics at the University of Firenze (Italy), who proposed a mathematical model that was built on the well-known epidemiological SIR model which is commonly used to study the spread of infectious diseases. Prof. Alberto proposed an extension to SIR model to account for two subclasses representing the current situation of adopting online teaching versus the physical study at schools/universities. The invited speaker, Prof. Alberto, confirmed that the proposal was at initial stage and a developed version of the model to be considered in later stages.

The event was characterized with a good attendance as it attracted not only academic staff but also undergraduate and postgraduate students. Moreover, the webinar ended with a rich discussion concerning adopting the proposed model by different counties.