# Seq2Seq Surrogates of Epidemic Models to Facilitate Bayesian Inference

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.09617 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.09617/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 4 of its 29 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Sep 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Simple and Scalable Predictive Uncertainty Estimation using Deep Ensembles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01474/) (2016)
- [Transformers in Time Series: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.07125/) (2022)
- [Recent Advances in Adversarial Training for Adversarial Robustness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.01356/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [SMRS: advocating a unified reporting standard for surrogate models in the artificial intelligence era](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06753/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Epidemic models are powerful tools in understanding infectious disease. However, as they increase in size and complexity, they can quickly become computationally intractable. Recent progress in modelling methodology has shown that surrogate models can be used to emulate complex epidemic models with a high-dimensional parameter space. We show that deep sequence-to-sequence (seq2seq) models can serve as accurate surrogates for complex epidemic models with sequence based model parameters, effectively replicating seasonal and long-term transmission dynamics. Once trained, our surrogate can predict scenarios a several thousand times faster than the original model, making them ideal for policy exploration. We demonstrate that replacing a traditional epidemic model with a learned simulator facilitates robust Bayesian inference.