We’ll be featuring mini-profiles of our new PhD students over the next few weeks. We look forward to welcoming them into our community!
Khondoker Nabi
Hi! My name is Khondoker Nazmoon Nabi and I’m from Dhaka, Bangladesh. I graduated from the University of Dhaka with a BS in Mathematics. Afterwards, I pursued my MS in Mathematics from the same university. Currently, I’m working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.During my master’s program, I worked on chronic Hepatitis C Virus infection incorporating cell proliferation and human immune responses. As the COVID-19 pandemic starts unfolding, I employed the idea of advanced data-fitting and forecasting approaches to generate future COVID-19 trajectories for severely affected countries and proposed optimal control strategies in the absence of safe and effective vaccine. During the pandemic, I designed several research projects by myself and started working on those projects. In the meantime, I got awarded with a government-funded project.Deep learning is playing an integral role in the evolution of the field of time-series analysis. Keeping this in mind, I have supervised some of my undergrad students, with whom I analysed four deep learning models to forecast COVID-19 cases in Brazil, Russia and the UK. In one of my recent works, I designed a novel concept of compartmental evolutionary game-theoretic model for designing infectious contact-reduction measures incorporating human behavioural responses.From my experience with healthcare data, I have observed that we need a better understanding of the biological systems and to translate them to algorithms to encounter the diagnosis errors and yield to satisfactory decisions. I look forward to developing robust mathematical disease models for more insightful forecasting during any disease outbreak. I also want to explore clinical trial methodology, causal inference in the high dimensions, and advanced statistical methods at HSPH.During my free time, I love to play football and explore new restaurants with friends. I’m really excited to meet my cohort-mates at HSPH.
Mónica Robles Fontán
Hi everyone! My name is Mónica M. Robles Fontán and I just turned 29 years old. I was raised in a small town in Puerto Rico in a very close knit family. I completed my bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 2016 and went on to complete a Master of Science degree in Pure Mathematics in 2019. Then, I decided to pursue a Master of Public Health in Biostatistics, completed in 2020. All of my current degrees I completed at the University of Puerto Rico. After graduation, I was hired by the Puerto Rico Department of Health as part of the Data Science team informing the Secretary of Health. In October 2021, I transitioned to work directly for the current Puerto Rico Chief Medical Officer as an Informatician as appointed by the CDC Foundation.My research interests are broad, as I’ve been fortunate to work in different aspects of mathematics, statistics, and data. However, I do have a special interest in learning more about Bayesian Statistics and Big Data management.I spend most of my free time with my partner and my beloved dog. We enjoy quiet nights at home watching our favorite tv shows and dining with friends. Also, my favorite things are coffee and/or ice cream dates and pets—any type of pet. To me, there are not enough pictures of pets you can share with me.My journey with the Puerto Rico Department of Health has taught me a great deal about public health, data management, statistics, and public policy. I am eager to share some of my experiences with fellow students, as well as to learn more about what they have done before joining the program. I am very excited (and nervous) to begin this new chapter!
