Book excerpt: This IMA Volume in Mathematics and its Applications MATHEMATICAL APPROACHES FOR EMERGING AND REEMERGING INFECTIOUS DISEASES: MODELS, AND THEORY METHODS is based on the proceedings of a successful one week workshop. The pro ceedings of the two-day tutorial which preceded the workshop "Introduction to Epidemiology and Immunology" appears as IMA Volume 125: Math ematical Approaches for Emerging and Reemerging Infectious Diseases: An Introduction. The tutorial and the workshop are integral parts of the September 1998 to June 1999 IMA program on "MATHEMATICS IN BI OLOGY. " I would like to thank Carlos Castillo-Chavez (Director of the Math ematical and Theoretical Biology Institute and a member of the Depart ments of Biometrics, Statistics and Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, Cornell University), Sally M. Blower (Biomathematics, UCLA School of Medicine), Pauline van den Driessche (Mathematics and Statistics, Uni versity of Victoria), and Denise Kirschner (Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan Medical School) for their superb roles as organizers of the meetings and editors of the proceedings. Carlos Castillo-Chavez, es pecially, made a major contribution by spearheading the editing process. I am also grateful to Kenneth L. Cooke (Mathematics, Pomona College), for being one of the workshop organizers and to Abdul-Aziz Yakubu (Mathe matics, Howard University) for serving as co-editor of the proceedings. I thank Simon A. Levin (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton Uni versity) for providing an introduction.