Graduate Research Opportunities

Students who are interested in doing an MSc or PhD degree in statistics or biostatistics with me should feel free to contact me via email. Many of the research interests below can be combined into a single MSc or PhD project.

 

Current Research Interests

1. STATISTICAL MODELING OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE

Diseases of humans, animals and plants
Spatial systems
Network-based systems
Measurement error & latent information
Robustness to assumptions
Computational methodologies (see Bayesian & Computational Statistics below)
Study design
Model comparison
Model adequacy/goodness of fit
Disease surveillance models

 

2. BAYESIAN AND COMPUTATIONAL STATISTICS

Markov chain Monte Carlo methods (MCMC)
Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC)
Gaussian process emulation
Machine learning-based approximate inference
Importance sampling and sequential Monte Carlo (SMC)

3. ECOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL MODELING

Spatial and spatiotemporal models (e.g. disease mapping)
Invasive species models (e.g. Ash borer, Pine beetle, Giant hogweed)
Fire spread models
Animal movement models

 

4. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

Bayesian experimental design
Crop trials (e.g. dealing with inter-plot interference in experiments on crop diseases)
Spatial design for experiments used to ascertain infectious disease dynamics
Response surface methodology and optimal design

 

5. STATISTICAL & MACHINE LEARNING

Random forests & ensemble methods
Networks and deep learning  
High dimensional model selection (e.g. gene selection)
Predictive modelling and classification

 

6. OTHER TOPICS

Bayesian clinical trials
Network meta-analyses
Discrete choice experiments

 

University of Calgary

Department of Production Animal Health, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine

Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Science

Calgary, Alberta T2N 4Z6 CANADA

Phone: +1 (403) 210-7985

Email: robert.deardon[at]ucalgary.ca