Research supervision

I am currently interested in supervising PhD projects on the following topics:

l Model diagnostics for infectious epidemics

Stochastic modelling of communicable disease outbreaks is challenging due to inter-dependence in the involved

transmission dynamics and imperfect observation of infection-related events. Estimation in such models is now

well established, but research on model assessment and comparison is still under progress. This project will build on

recently developed tools for epidemic model diagnostics to investigate the use of Bayesian methodology related to

latent residuals, in cases where the epidemic outbreak is: (a) under-reported, (b) at early stages of its course,

and/or (c) under the impact of intervention measures.

Supervisor: Prof. G Streftaris

l Bayesian predictive modelling for morbidity risk

The principal aim of this research is to develop, evaluate and assess models for morbidity risk and related insurance

rates, under statistical and machine learning frameworks that allow for uncertainty quantification. The proposed work

will address the timely need to develop robust predictive models for rapidly changing morbidity risks and the relevant

impact on health-related insurance. This research area requires forward-thinking attention, as morbidity trends are

changing dynamically due to various complex factors including changes in life expectancy, improvements in health

and care and developments in medical science. Earlier work has shown that morbidity and health-insurance-related

rates are idiosyncratic to a number of factors, including demographic, socio-economic and policy-linked characteristics.

The proposed project will build on this work to identify suitable morbidity risk factors for a wide range of illnesses, also

relating to insured populations. We will also assess the robustness of the developed predictive models and select an

ensemble of models that perform well under a set of criteria designed to optimise both the interpretability and predictive

quality for risks associated with certain medical morbidity causes.

Supervisor: Prof. G Streftaris