About the Reich Lab

Led by PI Nicholas Reich and based in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Reich Lab focuses on developing statistical methods and tools for data arising from infectious disease settings. In 2019, we were designated as a CDC-funded Influenza Forecasting Center of Excellence and from 2020-2023 we ran the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub.

We use statistics, data science, and epidemiology to gain better understanding of the complexities of infectious disease dynamics. Our work has been featured in the New York Times, FiveThirtyEight, the Economist, and the Boston Globe, and on National Public Radio and PBS NewsHour.

With active funded projects from the NIH and CDC, the Lab is involved in independent and collaborative research efforts. Our collaborators include the Influenza Division at the US CDC, the Dengue Branch of the CDC in Puerto Rico, the Infectious Disease Dynamics Working Group and Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins, the Thai Ministry of Public Health and National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Children's Hospital Colorado, and the Veterans Health Administration branches in New York City and Iowa City.

People

Current members of the Reich Lab are shown below in a random order that is shuffled every day.

Li Shandross

  
Data Analyst
Data Analyst
Li is a data analyst who completed an MS in Biostatistics as part of the 4+1 program at UMass Amherst. Li's research interests include infectious disease forecasting, particularly the application of new techniques, and ensemble methods. Outside of work, Li enjoys writing and dancing.

Aaron Gerding

  
MS Student
MS Student
Aaron is pursuing a degree in biostatistics after a previous career lecturing in the UMass-Amherst math department. He is especially interested in how the public health needs of populations with low social or political visibility should inform forecasting and risk assessment methodologies.

Álvaro J. Castro Rivadeneira

  
PhD Student
PhD Student
Álvaro is a PhD student in epidemiology. He is interested in science communication, economic inequality, gambling, and infectious diseases. He received his MD from Universidad Internacional del Ecuador and a BSc in Biochemistry from McGill University.

Martha Zorn

  
Data analyst/Project manager
Data analyst/Project manager
Martha has worked as a biostatistician and data manager in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences, Amherst since 1987. She likes doing anything outside and garland dancing.

Doug Arbetter

  
PhD Student
PhD Student
Doug is a part-time PhD student in Biostatistics, and is a statistician at AstraZeneca in the Vaccines and Immune Therapies unit. His research interest is infectious disease forecasting for public health and clinical trial sponsors. He enjoys playing tennis and skiing in his free time.

Becky Sweger

  
Research Software Engineer
Research Software Engineer
Becky has been a technical leader and software engineer for more than twenty-five years. After completing an MS in Information Systems at Drexel University, she began specializing in data modeling and data-driven applications and has experience in numerous domains, including healthcare, government, and higher education. Becky enjoys skeeball, spending time with her family, and reading science fiction.

Minsu Kim

  
PhD Student
PhD Student
Minsu is a PhD student in Biostatistics. Her research interest is infectious disease forecasting, ensemble methods, and machine learning. She enjoys programming. She usually go hiking in her free time.

Nicholas Reich

  
Principal Investigator
Principal Investigator
Nick is a Professor of Biostatistics at UMass. He received his PhD in Biostatstics from Johns Hopkins, where he also did his post-doctoral training in infectious disease epidemiology. He also enjoys spending time outside with his family (hiking, camping, canoeing, gardening).

Evan Ray

  
Research Faculty
Research Faculty
Evan is a Research Assistant Professor of Biostatistics at UMass-Amherst. He received his PhD in statistics from UMass-Amherst, developing methods to infer physical activity type and intensity from accelerometer data. A former post-doc in the Reich Lab, he also works on developing methods for predicting infectious disease outbreaks.

Anna Krystalli

  
Research Software Engineer
Research Software Engineer
Anna is a Research Software Engineering consultant at R-RSE specialising in R. She has been engaged by the Lab to work with the wider Consortium of Infectious Disease Modeling Hubs on developing the [HubVerse](https://hubdocs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/), a collection of R packages and infrastructure enabling set up, maintainance, submission and access to data of modeling hubs. She received her PhD in Marine Macroecology from the University of Sheffield, UK and spent 5 years as a Research Software Engineer with the University of Sheffield RSE team before returning home to Greece and setting up on her own. She is also a Software Review Editor for rOpenSci.

Melissa Kerr

  
Project Manager
Project Manager
Melissa completed an MS in global health at King\'s College London and spent four years as manager of the European Cholangiocarcinoma Network. In her free time, Melissa enjoys travelling and hiking.

Matthew Cornell

  
Software Engineer
Software Engineer
Matt is the lab\'s research software engineer. His M.S. is in Computer Science from UMass/Amherst, and his B.S. is in E.E. Before grad school he worked for NASA\'s Kennedy Space Center in Space Shuttle operations. Since then he\'s worked for decades in various AI research labs, writing all types of software.

Dongah Kim

  
Postdoctoral Researcher
Postdoctoral Researcher
Dongah is a postdoctoral researcher of Biostatistics at UMass-Amherst. She received her PhD in statistics from UMass-Amherst, developing methods to improve inference from dependent network data.

Alumni

Nutcha Wattanachit


PhD Student (2018-2023)

Ariane Stark


MS Student (2020-2023)

Quinn White


Undergraduate Student (2022-2023)

Estee Cramer


PhD Student (2020-2022)

Vrushti Mody


MS Student (2021-2022)

Vidhi Mody


MS Student (2021-2022)

Serena Yijin Wang


Data Analyst (2020-2022)

Xi Meng


PhD Student (2015-2021)

Graham Casey Gibson


PhD Student (2017-2021)

Dasuni Jayawardena


Undergrad Researcher (2020-2021)

Yuxin David Huang


Software Engineer (2020 - 2021)

Trust Okorie


Undergrad intern (2021)

Richa Jain


Undergrad intern (2021)

Khoa Le


MS Student/Software Engineer (2019-2021)

Abdul Hannan Kanji


MS Student/Software Engineer (2020-2021)

Apurv Shah


Undergraduate Student/Software Engineer (2021)

Ayush Khandelwal


Undergraduate Student/Software Engineer (2020)

Tom McAndrew


Postdoctoral Fellow (2018-2020)

Katie House


Software Developer (2018-2020)

Justin Stott


Undergrad RA (2019-2020)

Stephen Lauer


PhD Student (2014-2019)

Alexandria (Lexi) Brown


Post-doctoral Fellow (2015-2018)

Coco Kusiak


MS Student (2017-2018)

Willow Crawford-Crudell


Undergrad Intern (2018)

Dean Gladish


Undergrad Intern (2018)

Rebecca Silva


Undergrad Intern (2018)

Abhinav Tushar


MS Student (2016-2018)

Kristina Yamkovoy


Undergrad Researcher (2017-2018)

Evan Moore


Undergrad Researcher (2018)

Harley Jean


Undergrad Researcher (2016-2017)

Justin Baldwin


MS Student (2016-2017)

Krzysztof Sakrejda


Post-doctoral Fellow (2015-2017)