Bayesian Spatio-temporal modeling with Department of Health data

The Bayesian modeling project is a collaborative project involving seven epidemiologists from the Department of Health, Western Australia (DoHWA), three researchers from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and the project director from FrontierSI. The project manager was Dr Alex Xiao, a senior epidemiologist from DoHWA.

From August to November 2021, I worked on this project as an intern, supervised by Dr Susanna Cramb and Dr Alex Xiao. I learned a behemoth amount in relation to Bayesian modeling and computation, goal setting and, of course, the core skill of effective communication. During the internship I was responsible for the following exciting tasks

• Exploring the wealth of health data available at DOHWA for mapping
• Assessing, deciding and running a variety of Bayesian spatio-temporal models
• Optimizing and simplifing Bayesian R packages (nimble and CARBayesST) by crafting wrapper functions in R
• Prepare two written reports (one approx. 10 pages and the other approx. 100 pages)
• Prepare slides and R code for three days of intensive training
• Help conduct said training by travelling to Perth!

Fortunately, I continue to work on this project in a consultation capacity as a QUT research assistant.