Research Focus
I’m interested in statistical methods to reduce disparities and inefficiencies in healthcare. This currently manifests in work on biostatistical and reinforcement learning approaches to understanding and improving health outcomes in opioid use disorder.
I Previously to identify biomarkers for Alzheimer’s Dementia, Heart Failure, and COVID-19. The overarching goal was to find reliable markers of disease or to compare existing methods to determine which diagnostic approach was optimal in terms of expense or invasiveness
Previous Work
Before starting my PhD, my work fell roughly into five (often overlapping) spheres.
General Research Programming
I worked on apps that complement publications to make their content easier to use and increase engagement.
Original Software
I worked on creating new software for unmet needs. One example is our Bayesian COVID Diagnostics app. This serves to complement our manuscript on lateral flow assays for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies as well as providing the user with an easy-to-use tool to avoid the pitfalls of black-and-white thinking about diagnostics and counter-intuitive conditional probability. Another is ContrApption, which is a JavaScript-powered R package that allows to user to create an interactive widget for exploring the results of differential expression experiments or any dataset with similar structure.
Statistics for biomarkers
I worked on statistical analysis for biomarkers of potential use in Alzheimer’s Dementia and Neurological symptoms of COVID-19. Publications related to this can be found on my Google Scholar page.
Statistics and genomics for basic science
For an example of this, check out our manuscript on stress-dependent signatures of cellular and extracellular tRNA-derived small RNAs (tDRs). We’re interested in this from a basic science perspective as well as a potential avenue of biomarkers for diseases.
“Hacktivism”
I had the privilege of contributing to a web tool that allows users to interact with a dataset that ranks the states in the US based on how well they support the financial well-being of survivors of domestic abuse. I did this as a member of RagTag in support of FREEFROM.