Bayesian semi-mechanistic modelling with greta for ecology and epidemiology

Speaker: Nick Golding, Telethon Kids Institute, Australia

Abstract

I’ll give an overview of the work my group does in statistical ecology for vector-borne disease control, and my recent foray into COVID-19 modelling for the Australian government. All of these applications rely on fun and weird Bayesian semi-mechanistic models developed using greta, the general-purpose MCMC software package I built. I’ll give an overview of gretas and some recent work on extension packages for ecological modelling and predictive mapping. These include integrating population dynamic models into spatial statistical models, and fast solutions to Gaussian Markov random field models (like in INLA) using banded matrices. I’ll be around for a few days, and very keen to talk with people about their fun and weird models and possible greta implementations of them!