University of Arizona · Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health

Digital
Epidemiology

Where social networks become disease maps. Where your phone is a sensor. Where code meets outbreak response. This is not the epidemiology you learned in the textbooks.

Credits 3 Units
When Fall 2026
Format In-Person

What if the next pandemic could be detected by a search query before a single lab test comes back?

Digital epidemiology sits at the frontier of disease surveillance — mining social media feeds, parsing search engine trends, and orchestrating participatory networks that turn millions of people into real-time health sensors. This course teaches you how to build and operate those systems.

Curriculum Architecture

Six domains.
One new way to see disease.

The course moves from foundational concepts through hands-on data operations to cutting-edge digital interventions. Each module builds on the last.

01

Digital Disease Detection & Infodemiology

Passive and active crowdsourcing, social media mining, search query analysis, natural language processing fundamentals, and participatory surveillance at global scale.

02

Social Network Epidemiology

Network models, metapopulations, small-world and fat-tailed networks. Analyze how pathogens and information flow through the same social structures.

03

Digital EpiOps

The technical spine — file formats, data pipelines, management tools, and operational workflows for handling epidemiological data in real-world conditions.

04

Digital Contact Tracing

Exposure notification systems, proximity detection, centralized vs. decentralized architectures, and the privacy-preserving protocols that shaped global pandemic response.

05

Digital Health Cohorts & Trials

Design and manage remote digital health studies. Explore retention strategies, digital biomarkers, eCohort definitions, and how digital trials reshape precision public health.

06

Platform Building & Interventions

From datathons to functional prototypes. Build a digital epidemiology platform or intervention as your capstone. Pitch it to donors, investors, and the research community.

Questions worth asking

Is this for you?

If any of these keep you up at night, you already belong here.

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Can a network of proximity sensors in a nursing home predict an MDRO outbreak before the first culture turns positive?

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What happens when you combine participatory surveillance data from 11 countries and 22 million data points into a single real-time dashboard?

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How do you design a contact tracing system that protects privacy and stops transmission?

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Could an AI model trained on social media signals detect misinformation epidemics as reliably as biological ones?

→

What does a disease network look like when the nodes are not people but tweets, apps, and wearable devices?

Fall 2026 Timeline

15 weeks. Zero filler.

Scroll through the semester arc — from foundational concepts to your final pitch.

Week 01
Introduction to Digital Epidemiology
Lecture
Week 02
Infodemiology & Passive Crowdsourcing
Lecture
Week 03
Active Crowdsourcing & Participatory Surveillance
Lecture
Week 04
Digital EpiOps
Hands-on
Week 05
System Orchestrators: Global Flu View
Lecture
Week 06
EpiCore, EpiHack & CORDS
Guest Speakers
Week 08
Social Network Epidemiology: Concepts
Lecture
Week 09
Social Network Analysis: Data Lab
Hands-on
Week 10
Digital Contact Tracing & Exposure Notification
Lecture
Week 11
Privacy Protocols & Ethics Debate
Seminar
Week 12
Digital Health Cohorts & Trials
Lecture
Week 13
Building a Digital Epi Platform
Workshop
Week 14
Project Check-in
Review
Week 15
Science, Pitch!
Final Presentations
Your Instructor

Onicio Batista Leal Neto, PhD

Dr. Onicio Batista Leal Neto

Assistant Research Professor in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Arizona. Leads the AI for Public Health Initiative and directs the Global Flu View platform — a participatory surveillance system operating across 11 countries.


His research bridges digital technologies and public health, from proximity sensor networks in healthcare facilities to AI-powered surveillance systems. He brings real operational experience in building the tools this course teaches you to understand.

44+
Published Papers
11
Countries in GFV
22M+
Surveillance Data Points
2nd
PH & AI Summer School

The network is waiting.

GHI/EPID 526 opens for registration through UAccess. Secure your node in the graph before the semester begins.

Register on UAccess Contact Instructor