Title: Network structure in aging: spherical cows and people

Abstract:

As we age, we accumulate damage.  This damage is stochastic, and leads to variation in individual health and lifespan. We model a population of aging individuals with a stochastic network model, where interacting nodes represent health attributes. We characterize network damage with the Frailty Index (FI), which is simply the proportion of accumulated health deficits. Our model recovers Gompertz' law of mortality and the observed increase in FI with age, but also allows us to explore how deficit accumulation occurs.  By considering different types of nodes (or of health attributes) we have started to see the underlying network structure, both in our model and in observational data. 

**Refreshments will be served at 2:30 p.m. (BEFORE the seminar) in room ARC 233