YSPH Biostatistics Seminar: “A novel class of mixed Poisson distributions and wastewater-based epidemiology"

NOTE: BIS 525 students are required to attend in person. Others are invited to attend in person, but may also attend via Zoom.

SPEAKER: Will Townes, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics and Data Science, Carnegie Mellon University

TITLE: “A novel class of mixed Poisson distributions and wastewater-based epidemiology"

ABSTRACT: Mixed Poisson families are widely used to model count data with overdispersion, zero inflation, or heavy tails in a variety of applications including finance, biology, and the physical sciences. The Poisson rate is typically assigned a nonnegative-valued mixing distribution. Surprisingly, it is also possible for the mixing distribution to have negative support. For example, the Hermite distribution is analogous to mixing a Poisson with an unconstrained Gaussian and can be derived using generating functions so long as constraints on the natural parameter are satisfied. I will give a general characterization of this unusual class as well as several concrete examples. Time permitting, I will also briefly present some recent applied work in wastewater-based epidemiology involving the pepper mild mottle virus biomarker.

YSPH values inclusion and access for all participants. If you have questions about accessibility or would like to request an accommodation, please contact Charmila Fernandes at Charmila.fernandes@yale.edu. We will try to provide accommodations requested by November 6, 2025.