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Irena Papst, PhD
I’m a mathematical modeller and data scientist with highly-transferable skills in software development, teaching, and scientific communication.
(she/elle)
Selected Work Experience
Scientist
National Microbiology Laboratory
Public Health Agency of Canada
Current - May 2022
- Modelling and forecasting infectious diseases in the Public Health Risk Sciences Division
- Developing internal modelling infrastructure and scientific software
Postdoctoral fellow
Department of Mathematics & Statistics
McMaster University
May 2022 - Sep 2021
- Modelling and analysing infectious disease dynamics with Drs. David J.D. Earn,
Benjamin M. Bolker, and Jonathan Dushoff - Projects include forecasting SARS-CoV-2 infection reports for Ontario, Canada and developing 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, user-friendly and well-documented.
EPACmodel
Author, maintainer
N/A
Sep 2023
- An R package to use documented and versionned iterations of the Early Pandemic Age-structured Compartmental model, available on GitHub
Selected Publications
I strive to produce clear and engaging publications accompanied by organized public code repositories so that all of my published work is reproducible.
Estimating the impact of COVID-19 vaccination in Canada: a counterfactual study
Mitchell EJ, Papst I, Earn DJD
N/A
N/A
In preparation
Forecasting infectious disease spread as new variants emerge and vaccination rates increase
Papst I, Li M, Champredon D, Dushoff J, Bolker BM, Earn DJD
N/A
N/A
In preparation (preliminary manuscript available upon request)
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
Ontario COVID-19 forecast, 5 June 2021
Papst I, Li M, Bolker BM, Dushoff J, Earn DJD
N/A
Jun 2021
https://mac-theobio.github.io/forecasts/outputs/McMasterOntarioForecastsBlog2021-06-05
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
I am committed to open science and try to make all materials that I develop freely-available, including my talk slides.
Selected Teaching
My extensive experience teaching spans topics across mathematics, statistics, and computer science, in large and small classroom settings, in-person and online.
Short Course on Forecasting for Decision-Making
Canadian Ecological Forecasting Initiative
Fields Institute
Jul 2023 - Jul 2023
- One of four instructors for this short course with roughly 50 participants
- Developed openly-available teaching materials, including a COVID-19 forecasting case study, a git/GitHub primer, and an introduction to modelling lecture
Introduction to Modelling
Department of Mathematics & Statistics
McMaster University
May 2022 - Jan 2022
- Sole course instructor for a third year course of 150 undergraduate students, leading a team of three teaching assistants
- Wrote and delivered lectures, designed assignments, and planned a group modelling project
- Coordinated grading for all assessments, designed rubrics, and assessed submissions for group project components
- Frequently corresponded with students over email, online discussion boards, and one-on-one in office hours
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Last updated on 11 Aug 24.