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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
Li is a data anylst who completed her MS in Biostatistics as part of the 4+1 program at UMass Amherst. Li has research interests in infectious disease forecasting, particularly the application of new methods, and enjoys dancing and writing outside of work.
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.