Eamon B. O’Dea

The main theme of my research has been the development of methods to identify and estimate parameters for models of disease contact and transmission. My work has shown that, by pooling information from many outbreaks, transmission rates can be much more accurately estimated and associated with predictive variables. I have also developed a method to estimate the rates at which HIV-risk relationships form and break from a complex survey data set. My work has also demonstrated how contact heterogeneity may influence estimates of pathogen incidence based on molecular data, and a related project that develops methods for regression modeling of pathogen migration rates based on location-tagged sequences is in progress. In some work on identification of models for the spread of an emerging porcine disease I learned about critical slowing down, and I have since contributed to many publications on the potential use of dynamical systems concepts in the forecasting of major shifts in the dynamics of infectious diseases. I have also become involved in several collaborative infectious disease forecasting projects, such as the COVID-19 Forecast Hub, and I continue to work in this area.

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