On 1 January 2013, it will be twenty years since Epidemic Models started as a 6-month programme in the first year of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences. Since then, the field has grown enormously, in topics addressed, methods and data available (e.g. genetics/genomics, immunological data, social, contact, spatial, and movement data were hardly available at the time). Apart from these advances, there has also been an increase in the need for these approaches because we have seen the emergence and re-emergence of infectious agents worldwide, and the complexity and non-linearity of infection dynamics, as well as effects of prevention and control, are such that mathematical and statistical analysis is essential for insight and prediction, now more than ever before. Read more at http://www.newton.ac.uk/programmes/IDD/. Image from The New England Journal of Medicine, Gardy, 'Whole-Genome Sequencing and Social-Network Analysis of a Tuberculosis Outbreak', Volume 364, pp 730-9. Copyright ©2011 Massachusetts Medical Society. Reprinted with permission from Massachusetts Medical Society.