CDC SWEEP Intern

Intern with Analytics Team of IDEA Group, DGMQ, CDC, mentored by Drs. Ardath Grills and Sarah Bowden.​

​Contributed to Modeling Task Force projects under supervision of Dr. Michael Johansson (‘00).​

​Wrangled data and interpreted results of boosted regression tree machine learning model to understand the characteristics of COVID-19 hotspots at the county level​
Collected and analyzed data to approximate the dispersion parameter and risk of COVID-19 transmission in large gatherings​
Assisted with modification of SEAIR influenza model to apply to COVID-19 spread on cruise ships​

​This internship reaffirmed my desire to be an infectious disease modeler while also allowing me to hone my data wrangling skills in R, expand my understanding of the application and implementation of compartmental disease models, and appreciate the ability of machine learning models to combine a host of weak predictor variables to produce a powerful predictive tool. I’m really grateful for this opportunity.