Holder： Fan Bu（University of Michigan）
Time：2025-05-09 15:30-17:00
Location：Conference Room 220, New Public Health Building, Peking University Health Science Center
Abstract:
We discuss two case studies of developing Bayesian statistical methods for evidence generation in public health. In the first project, we introduce a novel method to learn HIV transmission patterns across demographic groups by integrating viral genetic sequencing data. We model pairs of individuals with potential transmissions and their demographics (e.g., age and sex) through a spatial Poisson process, introducing latent variables for unobserved transmission links informed by viral sequencing results. An efficient data-augmented inference algorithm is presented. Applied to large cohort data from Uganda, our method reveals high-resolution transmission structures and identifies important high-risk populations, while offering computational advantages over existing methods.
In the second project, we propose a new framework for post-market vaccine safety surveillance, which sequentially analyzes observational health data to estimate risks of adverse events (AEs) following vaccination. We develop a Bayesian sequential analysis framework that improves flexibility, accuracy, and power in detecting AEs. It corrects for estimation bias using a Bayesian hierarchical model that jointly analyzes a large set of negative control outcomes with no association to vaccination. Applied to six large databases covering over 360 million patients, our method outperforms the current state-of-the-art by reducing false positives and enabling faster AE detection.
About the Speaker:
Fan Bu is currently an Assistant Professor in Biostatistics at University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA). She is broadly interested in developing statistical and computational methods for emerging and complex data structures with applications in infectious diseases modeling, observational health studies, and computational social science. Before joining UMich in early 2024, she obtained her PhD in Statistics from Duke University in 2021 and received her postdoctoral training at UCLA.
Your participation is warmly welcomed!
欢迎扫码关注北大统计科学中心公众号，了解更多讲座信息!
