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Irena Papst, PhD
I’m a scientist specializing in infectious disease modelling with highly-transferable skills in research, software development, data science, training, and scientific communication.
(she/elle)
Recent positions
Scientist
Modelling Hub, Science and Policy Integration Branch
Public Health Agency of Canada
Current - May 2022
- Create and simulate models of infectious disease spread to support Agency initiatives
- Develop scientific software and modelling infrastructure
- Analyze and communicate research results
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Mathematics & Statistics
McMaster University
May 2022 - Sep 2021
- Forecasted COVID-19 case reports for Ontario, Canada and developed software for simulating infectious disease spread
Education
PhD, Applied Mathematics
Center for Applied Mathematics
Cornell University
Aug 2021 - Sep 2015
- Thesis: Mathematical modeling of infectious disease dynamics: from recurrence to emergence, advised by Dr. Steven Strogatz
- Minors: Computational Science and Engineering, Mathematics
- Courses: Advanced Topic Modeling, Applied Dynamical Systems, Applied Stochastic Processes, Asymptotics and Perturbation Methods, Matrix Computations, Numerical Analysis and Differential Equations, Stochastic Processes, Theory of Statistics
- GPA: 4.12 out of 4.3
Selected software
I develop open-source scientific software that is useful, robust, and well-documented.
Selected publications
ern: An R package to estimate the effective reproduction number using clinical and wastewater surveillance data
Champredon D, Papst I, Yusuf W
N/A
Jun 2024
PLOS ONE
10.1371/journal.pone.0305550
Early prediction of Ontario’s third COVID-19 wave
Papst I, Li M, Bolker BM, Dushoff J, Earn DJD
N/A
Apr 2021
https://mac-theobio.github.io/forecasts/outputs/ON_accuracy.html
Age-dependence of healthcare interventions for COVID-19 in Ontario, Canada
Papst I, Li M, Champredon D, Bolker BM, Dushoff J, Earn DJD
N/A
Apr 2021
BMC Public Health
10.1186/s12889-021-10611-4
I strive to produce clear and engaging publications accompanied by organized public code repositories so that all of my published work is reproducible.
Selected talks
Manage your analyses with ease using {targets}
R-Ladies Philly
Remote
Jan 2025
From scripts to pipelines with {targets}
R Government and Public Sector Conference
Georgetown University
Oct 2023
Introduction to git and GitHub
R User Group
Public Health Agency of Canada
Aug 2023
- Slides available online
I am committed to open science and try to make all materials that I develop freely-available, including my talk slides.
Community engagement
Coding Community of Practice Creator and Organizer
Modelling Hub, Science and Policy Integration Branch
Public Health Agency of Canada
Current - Oct 2023
- Maintain a community of practice around coding and scientific computing
- Host a weekly open session where members can share computing tips and troubleshoot issues together
- Maintain a documentation library for internally-available computing tools, along with a best practices guide for scientific software development
COVID-19 Forecasting
Ontario Modelling Consensus Table
Ontario Science Advisory Table
May 2022 - Feb 2021
- Helped prepare short-term forecasts of SARS-CoV-2 infection reports and hospitalizations for the province of Ontario to help guide the public health response to the ongoing pandemic
- Automated aspects of the Table’s regular process to generate a consensus forecast
- Improved plots of the Table’s consensus forecast
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Last updated on 11 Apr 2026.