Dr. Juan Vargas Soto, a researcher at the University of Tennessee, discusses a newly developed analytical framework for analyzing how animal movement, and in particular the correlation in space use across individuals, can affect the spatio-temporal risk of disease transmission. Correlation could be a critical factor for transmission of fast-paced parasites, but incorporating it in predictive models also represents a significant, yet exciting, future mathematical challenge.

Dr. William Godsoe is a former NIMBioS postdoctoral researcher and now Senior Lecturer at Lincoln University in New Zealand. His talk discusses his paper that uses “whimsical” examples comparing ideas of diversity in ecology to the narrative choices in the 2023 Barbie movie. The goal of his talk is to help mathematicians better convey abstract ideas about diversity.

Dr. Kristen Rappazzo is a researcher at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In her talk, she discusses investigating potential for bias in health studies while using weighted quantile sums (WQS) and quantile g-computation (QGC) in multiple situations using simulated data, illustrating potential challenges in analysis with directed acyclic graphs (DAG).