Mohamed Arnouss, who recently completed his PhD in computer science at Avignon University, has received the prestigious Fulbright Joint-Supervision scholarship. This award will enable him to pursue his research at New York University (NYU) starting in January 2027. He will join the Laboratory for Resilient and Complex Systems (LARX) to work on the application of reinforcement learning to epidemic management.
His doctoral research, conducted at the Laboratoire Informatique d’Avignon (LIA) under the supervision of Professor Yezekael Hayel and in collaboration with Professor Allali Karam from the Hassan II University of Casablanca, lies at the intersection of game theory, optimal control, economics, and epidemiology. It aims to understand how individual behaviors and public policies influence the spread of infectious diseases, while considering economic constraints and available resources.
The research project in New York, which will run from January 1st to December 31st, 2027, will focus on designing and validating a reinforcement learning agent capable of minimizing the epidemic peak under economic constraints. A key objective will be to directly penalize exceeding hospital capacity to incorporate the risk of healthcare system saturation into epidemic management strategies.
This stay at NYU is part of an international scientific journey initiated by Mohamed Arnouss, who studied in France and Morocco before his doctorate at Avignon University. His interdisciplinary research has already been presented at international conferences and published in scientific journals.
The Fulbright program, established in 1946, is an international educational and scientific exchange program supported by the U.S. government, fostering scientific mobility and international collaboration.
