Congratulations to JP Onnela for being selected by the Dean’s Challenge Program selection committee to receive the 2016 McLennan Family Fund Challenge Grant!
Each year, the Dean identifies a set of global health issues that will be key priorities in the selection and award of challenge grants – this year one of the priorities was Big Data in Health.
Funding will support JP’s project with postdoc Ian Barnett, as described below:
“Widespread use of cell phones creates scientific and statistical opportunities to learn about high-resolution mobility patterns of individuals. The position of an individual is however only known at certain points in time, with variable spatial precision, and the gap between observations can be large. We proposed the development of a statistical technique for dealing with both temporal sampling and limited spatial resolution of CDR (call detail record) and GPS (global positioning system) data. The method can be used in different applications from estimating spatial trajectories of people to learning about mobility patterns of patients.”
