Applied Mathematics Colloquium by Justin Slater: Statistical Methods and Challenges in Infectious Disease Epidemiology
Speaker: , assistant professor of mathematics and statistics, University of Guelph
Title: Statistical Methods and Challenges in Infectious Disease Epidemiology
Abstract:
Two central problems in infectious disease epidemiology are (i) estimating how many individuals are currently or have previously been infected, and (ii) estimating the disease鈥檚 reproduction rate. As a statistician, I address these challenges by developing hierarchical models that integrate multiple data sources including wastewater surveillance, serosurveys, infection trials, and reported case and mortality data. Each of these sources carries its own biases, complicating inference. In this talk, I outline statistical frameworks for combining such data and introduce modular Bayesian inference as a principled approach for accounting for these biases. I illustrate the methodology using surveillance data from Canada.
Applied Mathematics Colloquium