The Biostatistics & Epidemiology Department in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences (SPHHS) is looking for a post-doctoral researcher with a strong quantitative background and formal training in statistics, machine learning, computational epidemiology, or a closely related field. The post-doc will join the Reich Lab In the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, The Reich Lab currently has 7 trainees (1 post-doc, 3 PhD students, 1 MS student, and 2 undergraduates) and 2 staff programmers. Current lab members have a range of prior academic backgrounds including evolutionary biology, computer science, statistics, engineering, and business. The lab fosters a collegial and dynamic research environment.

The primary responsibility of the successful candidate will be to develop and apply ensemble methods for forecasting infectious disease outbreaks. This will involve developing and applying ensemble methods themselves and also developing new stand-alone forecasting models to feed into the ensemble. Areas of particular interest include integrating external biological data sources (e.g. laboratory tests) into forecasting models, including hierarchical spatial structure to improve forecasts for multiple locations, and looking at whether digital surveillance data can improve forecasts when the primary data source has reporting delays. With active collaborations focusing on forecasting influenza in the US and dengue fever in Thailand, the Reich Lab is currently leading the FluSightNetwork effort to create and disseminate ensemble forecasts for the US Influenza season in 20I7/2018. This effort has assembled 22 models from 5 different institutions in the US.

In addition, depending on the person's interest, the successful candidate could take advantage of professional development opportunities in other areas. For example, taking on leadership roles in large collaborative projects, writing grants, providing mentor-ship to undergraduate and graduate students, and, if desired, obtaining some classroom teaching experience, are possibilities.