Funding is sought for the Summer Institute in Statistics and Modeling in Infectious Diseases (SISMID) at the University of Washington. This proposal specifically requests funds for student / postdoctoral fellow participant scholarships and instructor stipends. The SISMID will be held for the first time in a smaller form in 2009. This proposal requests funds for 2010-2014. The summer program will provide introductory workshops on statistical methods and dynamic modeling in infectious diseases, evaluation of direct and indirect effects of intervention programs, particularly vaccination, causal inference, inference on networks, evolution of drug resistance, and evolutionary phylodynamics. The SISMID also provides an introductory workshop on immunology and biology of infectious diseases for statisticians and other quantitative scientists. Participants will be drawn from academia, industry and government. Instructors are drawn from the University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC), industry, and other institutions in the USA and other countries. The SISMID is directed by M. Elizabeth Halloran, Professor of the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Washington and FHCRC. The 2010 version of SISMID will offer the following modules: 1. Infectious Diseases and Immunology;2. Mathematical Models of Infectious Diseases;3. Probability and Statistical Inference;4. MCMC for Infectious Diseases;5. Design and Analysis of Vaccine Clinical Trials;6. Stochastic Dynamic Simulation Models;7. Cluster-Randomized Trials;8. Inference on Epidemics;9. Within-Host Modeling of the Immune Response;10. Evaluating Surrogates of Protection;11. Network Theory in Infectious Diseases;12. Causal Inference in Infectious Diseases;13. Evolutionary Inference and Phylodynamics;14. Evolution of Drug Resistance 15. Design and Analysis of Observational Studies. This award will support 60 student / postdoctoral fellow participants.
PROJECT NARRATIVE Statistical and mathematical methods for the study of infectious diseases and for discovery and evaluation of interventions have become increasingly important. It is essential to educate scientists in the statistical and mathematical methods for understanding evolution, transmission, genetics, dynamics, vaccines and drug resistance in infectious diseases. The Summer Institute in Statistics and Modeling in Infectious Diseases provides statistical and mathematical modeling training to infectious disease researchers, statisticians and other scientists. The education allows them to design studies, analyze data, and model dynamics and evolution of infectious diseases relevant to important public health and basic science questions.
