Effective and efficient algorithms for simulating sexually transmitted diseases

Sexually transmitted diseases affect millions of lives every year. In order to most effectively use prevention resources epidemiologists deploy models to understand how the disease spreads through the population and which intervention methods will be most effective at reducing disease perpetuation. Increasingly agent-based models are being used to simulate population heterogeneity and fine-grain sociological effects that are difficult to capture with traditional compartmental and statistical models. A key challenge is using a sufficiently large number of agents to produce robust and reliable results while also running in a reasonable amount of time.;In this thesis we show the effectiveness of agent-based modeling in planning coordinated responses to a sexually transmitted disease epidemic and present efficient algorithms for running these models in parallel and in a distributed setting. The model is able to account for population heterogeneity like age preference, concurrent partnership, and coital dilution, and the implementation scales well to large population sizes to produce robust results in a reasonable amount of time. The work helps epidemiologists and public health officials plan a targeted and well-informed response to a variety of epidemic scenarios.