Ivan Kramer

Associate Professor

Ph.D., University of California Berkeley, 1967

Contact Information
Room 312, Physics Bldg.
Department of Physics
Univ. Maryland Baltimore County
1000 Hilltop Circle
Baltimore, MD 21250

Phone:	(410) 455-2534
Email:	kramer@umbc.edu

Research Interests

Since 1983, I began applying physics modelling techniques to describe the spread and consequences of the human immunodeficiency viral (HIV) infection, the etiological cause of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), and other sexually transmitted diseases.

My techniques in describing the incidence of AIDS in HIV infected areas led to my receiving a grant from the AIDS Administration of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to model the epidemic in the state of Maryland. This project was successfully completed in August, 1990, and my Maryland AIDS incidence projections were used to construct the AIDS budget requests subsequently submitted to the Maryland Legislature.

I have recently perfected a method which enables the growth in the size of the HIV infected population within a country to be calculated independent of any dynamical model i.e. independent of any assumptions concerning how the infection was spread, and independent of the form of the mathematical function used to parametize the HIV infection curve. These results will enable the current total number of HIV infected Americans to be accurately calculated from available public health data.

In a recent paper I actually derived the HIV incubation distribution curve leading to AIDS from the hematic T-Helper cell density distribution for the seronegative population using an AIDS model that agrees with experiment. The future values of the HIV incubation period curve can now be calculated for the first time, and it is projected that 90% of infecteds will develop AIDS within 18 years after infection.

My current theory of how HIV causes AIDS has led me into the field of modeling the human immune system. I strongly believe that advances in understanding the dynamics of the immune system will lead to the ability to control all infectious diseases, not just the HIV infection.

Selected Publications

Accurately Simulating the Growth in the Size of the HIV Infected Population in Any AIDS Epidemic Country: Computing the USA Infection Curve

I. Kramer

1994, Mathematical and Computer Modelling 19:2, 91

Accurately Computing the Size of the HIV Infected Population in AIDS Epidemic Areas

I. Kramer

1992, Biomedical Modeling and Simulation, Proceedings of the 13th IMACS World Congress, Dublin, Ireland, 22-26 July 1991 and the IMACS Conference on Modelling and Control of Technological Systems, Lille, France, 7-10 May 1991. Edited by J. Eisenfeld, M. Witten and D.S. Levine; Published by Elsevier, pp. 125132, October, 1992.

Understanding the Time Delay Between HIV Infection and AIDS From a Model of HIV's Impact on the T-Helper Cell Density

I. Kramer

1992, Mathl Comput. Modelling 16:12, 55

Mathematically Modelling the Future AIDS Incidence in Maryland

I. Kramer

1992, Mathl. Comput. Modelling 16:10, 25

Is AIDS An Invariably Fatal Disease?: A Model Analysis of AIDS Survival Curves

I. Kramer

1991, Mathl. Comput. Modelling 15:9, 1

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