Joint Initiative for Causal Inference
Sponsor/Partner: Novo Nordisk
Project Description/Goals: To create an international powerhouse for statistical methods within casual inference to be used on RCT and observational data with a hub at Copenhagen University as well as at University of California, Berkeley by developing, implementing and disseminating methods for exploiting vast, new health datasets using state-of-the art advances in machine learning, causal inference, and statistical theory, and to build industry-wide consensus around best practices for answering pressing health questions in the modern methodological and data ecosystem.
CTML Faculty Involved: Maya Petersen M.D. Ph.D. and Mark van der Laan Ph.D.
Gilead-Berkeley Global Health Equity Initiative
Sponsor/Partner: Gilead Scienes
Project Description/Goals: The UC Berkeley School of Public Health and Gilead Sciences have launched the Gilead-Berkeley Global Health Equity Initiative to address real-world public health issues. Funded at $4.5 million for three years, the program focuses on infectious and non-communicable diseases and aims to enhance research, data management, and executive education. The initiative has three components: collaborations in applied research, involving doctoral students and junior faculty at the Center for Global Health; collaborations in biostatistics and data management under the CTML - Center for Targeted Machine Learning and Causal Inference and executive education.
CTML Faculty Involved: Alan Hubbard Ph.D., Maya Petersen M.D. Ph.D., Mark van der Laan Ph.D., Laura Balzer Ph.D., and Alejandro Schuler Ph.D.
Targeted Learning using Adaptive Designs for HIV Epidemic Control in East Africa
Sponsor/Partner: NIH/NIAID
Project Description/Goals: This project leverages the rich data increasingly generated in the course of the HIV epidemic response, and applies targeted machine learning to advance adaptive design and analytic approaches.
CTML Faculty Involved: Maya Petersen M.D. Ph.D. and Mark van der Laan Ph.D.
SEARCH Community Precision Health Study
Sponsor/Partner: NIH National Institute of Health (Subaward through UCSF)
Project Description/Goals: The Sustainable East Africa Research in Community Health (SEARCH) consortium designs and tests evidence based treatment and prevention interventions that will guide a global effort to end AIDS using a multi-disease, multi-sector approach.
CTML Faculty Involved: Maya Petersen M.D. Ph.D. and Laura Balzer Ph.D.
Halfspace Depth for Object and Functional Data
Sponsor/Partner: NSF National Science Foundation
Project Description/Goals: This project aims to develop a regularized halfspace depth for functional data, providing the first solution to a long-existing problem of degeneracy. Building on this foundation, the next phase will focus on extending the method to account for uncertainties in sparse and noisy longitudinal observations, expanding the few depth notions designed for this type of object. Additionally, a restricted metric halfspace depth will be explored to enable the detection of shape outliers with distinct features. The project will also propose practical graphical tools for outlier detection.
CTML Faculty Involved: Alejandro Schuler Ph.D.
Enhancing Outbreak Analytics and Forecasting with Electronic Health Records
Sponsor/Partner: CDC/Kaiser (PI Lewnard)
Project Description/Goals: A collaboration between research scientists at Kaiser Permanente Southern California (KPSC) and academic modeling team based in University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Francisco as part of the Outbreak Analytics and Disease Modeling (OADM) Network to improve existing pathogen surveillance toolkit (i.e., computational intractability of existing high-dimensional models and the need for enhanced nowcasting) and methodological innovations will be conducted in parallel with assessment of STLT public health department needs.
CTML Faculty Involved: Alan Hubbard Ph.D. and Alejandro Schuler Ph.D.
Evaluating Unassessed Chemicals Using Precision Prevention Methodologies
Sponsor/Partner: State of California, OEHHA
Project Description/Goals: To develop and implement rapid computational and molecular toxicology approaches for identifying toxic chemicals and safer alternatives.
CTML Faculty Involved: Alan Hubbard Ph.D.
Toxic Substances in the Environment
Sponsor/Partner: NIEHS
Project Description/Goals: Identify problems associated with hazardous waste sites that have proven intractable to current methods, applying a new approach called ‘exposomics’ to address these problems and employ novel cutting-edge scientific methods and direct engagement with key stakeholders and communities in a concerted effort to make a public health impact.
CTML Faculty Involved: Alan Hubbard Ph.D.
Enteric Pathogen Force of Infection among Children using Serology
Sponsor/Partner: NIH National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases
Project Description/Goals: High resolution measurements of pathogen infection in stool were paired with antibody response to i) verify that seroincidence estimated from IgG response qualitatively reflects incidence based on infection in stool; ii) develop new methods to estimate force of infection for enteric pathogens in low-resource settings that combine information from PCR testing in stool and antibody response in blood (IgG); and, iii) develop methods to estimate enteric pathogen force of infection from cross sectional surveys.
CTML Faculty Involved: Alan Hubbard Ph.D.
Strategic antiretroviral therapy and HIV testing for youth in rural Africa (SEARCH Youth)
Sponsor/Partner: NIH National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (Subaward through UCSF)
Project Description/Goals: Improve the health and well-being of adolescents and young adults (10-24 years) with HIV in rural Uganda and Kenya. Results from the project's first phase are available in Mwangwa, et al.
CTML Faculty Involved: Laura Balzer Ph.D.
Community Violence and Disparities in Maternal and Infant Health: Effects and Mechanisms
Sponsor/Partner: NIH (PI Ahern)
Project Description/Goals: To inform population health and clinical care approaches to address maternal and infant health disparities by race/ethnicity and foreign-born status, and motivate violence prevention programs that both reduce immediate injuries and deaths, and ultimately improve maternal and infant health and reduce health disparities in the US.
CTML Faculty Involved: Mark van der Laan Ph.D.