The 28th Annual MPH Practicum Symposium and Reception (In-Person Event)
The Annual MPH Practicum Symposium is a celebration of community-engaged learning, innovation, and impact, driven by public health graduate students. Over 100 MPH students will share the incredible work they’ve done over the past year in partnership with communities around the world.
View Program and RSVP to Attend: https://sph.washington.edu/mph-practicum/symposium
The Practicum is an essential part of the MPH candidate experience as it enables our students to take what they’ve learned in the classroom and apply it to the real world of public health. The Practicum also exemplifies our School’s commitment to community-based learning and partnerships. MPH students work under the supervision of both academic and public health agency mentors to advance the work of Public Health. We are delighted to honor our students’ hard work as well as faculty mentors and public health practice agencies that provide our students will invaluable practice-based projects and experiences each year.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Student Union Building (HUB). Campus room: HUB Ballroom. Accessibility Contact: Chelsea Elkins, sphaccess@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Special Events. Target Audience: Students, faculty, staff, agency leaders, donors, families, community members.
Wednesday, April 8, 2026, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
For more info visit sph.washington.edu. Biostatistics Seminar: Robust methods for meta-analysis of dose-response relationships.
Speaker: Aleksandr Aravkin, PhD, Associate Professor, UW Department of Applied Mathematics; Director, Math Sciences, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation; Adjunct Professor, Health Metrics Sciences, Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science & Engineering
Presentation: Robust methods for meta-analysis of dose-response relationships.
Abstract: We present the Burden of Proof framework, a set of innovations for meta-analysis to improve estimation of nonlinear dose-response relationships as well as provide additional metrics for broader comparisons of risk-outcome relationships to each other. We discuss technical challenges in modeling nonlinear risks and incorporating reported observations, as well as robust trimming strategies to reduce sensitivity to outliers. Shifting to new metrics and cross-pair comparisons, we define a burden of proof risk function: a quantile of the risk curve that represents a conservative effect size consistent with the available evidence after accounting for uncertainty…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Hans Rosling Center for Population Health (HRC). Campus room: HRC 135. Accessibility Contact: Deb Nelson, nelsod6@uw.edu, 206-685-9323. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, April 9, 2026, 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM.
General Exam - James Peng
Committee: Peter Gilbert (chair), Pamela Shaw, Linbo Wang, Amy Willis, Thomas Richardson, Lillian Cohn (GSR)
Presentation: Statistical methods for using deep viral sequencing data in HIV-1 prevention trial sieve analyses
Abstract: Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) exhibits substantial genetic diversity both across individuals and within a single infection, where rapidly evolving viral populations form complex within-host quasispecies. This diversity poses a major challenge for biomedical prevention strategies, as interventions such as vaccines or monoclonal antibodies may protect against some viral variants but not others. Sieve analysis provides a framework for evaluating whether prevention efficacy varies across viral characteristics, offering insight into mechanisms of protection and immune escape.
Recent advances in sequencing technologies have transformed the data available for sieve analysis. Rather than observing a single viral sequence per infected participant, investigators can now observe up to…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Hans Rosling Center for Population Health (HRC). Online Meeting Link: https://washington.zoom.us/j/95825337295. Campus room: HRC 342. Accessibility Contact: Deb Nelson, nelsod6@uw.edu, 206-685-9323. Event Types: Academics.
Friday, April 10, 2026, 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM.
Biostatistics Seminar: Osvaldo Espin-Garcia, PhD, Assistant Professor, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Western University
Speaker: Osvaldo Espin-Garcia, PhD, Assistant Professor, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Western University
Presentation title and abstract coming soon.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus room: Online. Accessibility Contact: Deb Nelson, nelsod6@uw.edu, 206-685-9323. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, April 16, 2026, 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM.
Biostatistics Student-Invited Seminar: Edward Kennedy, PhD, Associate Professor Statistics & Data Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Speaker: Edward Kennedy, PhD, Associate Professor Statistics & Data Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Presentation title and abstract coming soon.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Hans Rosling Center for Population Health (HRC). Campus room: HRC 135. Accessibility Contact: Deb Nelson, nelsod6@uw.edu, 206-685-9323. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, April 23, 2026, 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM.
Biostatistics Seminar: Kelley Harris, PhD, Associate Professor of Genome Sciences
Speaker: Kelley Harris, PhD, Assistant Professor of Genome Sciences
Presentation title and abstract coming soon.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Hans Rosling Center for Population Health (HRC). Campus room: HRC 135. Accessibility Contact: Deb Nelson, nelsod6@uw.edu, 206-685-9323. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, April 30, 2026, 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM.
Biostatistics Seminar: Tools for Interpreting Single-Cell Differentiation Trajectories
Speaker: Manu Setty, PhD, Associate Professor, Basic Sciences Division and Herbold Computational Biology Program, Public Health Sciences Division, Fred Hutch Cancer Center
Presentation: Tools for Interpreting Single-Cell Differentiation Trajectories
Abstract: Cellular differentiation unfolds as a continuous process across gene expression and chromatin landscapes, yet many single-cell analysis methods impose discrete categories that obscure the underlying dynamics. We have developed a suite of tools for interpreting differentiation trajectories directly from high-dimensional single-cell measurements: Mellon learns smooth, differentiable density functions over cell-state space using scalable Gaussian processes, capturing both local geometry and global topology of phenotypic landscapes in any single-cell modality. This continuous density representation provides a principled foundation for downstream inference. Kompot builds on this representation to perform differential analysis across conditions and detects…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Hans Rosling Center for Population Health (HRC). Campus room: HRC 135. Accessibility Contact: Deb Nelson, nelsod6@uw.edu, 206-685-9323. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, May 7, 2026, 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM.
Biostatistics Seminar: William DeWitt, PhD, Assistant Professor, Genome Sciences, University of Washington
Speaker: William DeWitt, PhD, Assistant Professor, Genome Sciences, University of Washington
Presentation title and abstract coming soon.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus room: HRC 135. Accessibility Contact: Deb Nelson, nelsod6@uw.edu, 206-685-9323. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, May 21, 2026, 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM.
Biostatistics Seminar: Matheus Viana, PhD, Associate Director, Image Analysis and Descr Modeling, Allen Institute
Speaker: Matheus Viana, PhD, Associate Director, Image Analysis and Descr Modeling, Allen Institute.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Hans Rosling Center for Population Health (HRC). Campus room: HRC 135. Accessibility Contact: Deb Nelson, nelsod6@uw.edu, 206-685-9323. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, June 4, 2026, 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM.