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Currently

I’m an applied statistician and data scientist working in infectious diseases at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC.

My interests are in:

  • Infectious disease modelling and epidemiology, particularly the detection, surveillance, and dynamics of new and emerging pathogens and how to better inform public health with actionable insights in a timely manor

  • Bayesian inference and analytic techniques

  • Application of survey analytic techniques (including small area estimation) applied to novel data sets

  • Applied machine learning and prediction

  • Simulation and optimization

  • Causal inference

Additionally, I am an advocate for improving mobility. In my spare time I volunteer as a member of the Winston-Salem Transportation Coalition where we advocate for better public transit. I employ data science techniques in order to quantify and shed light on the issues.

You can read more about my work here. Additionally, I maintain a site regarding local politics and economic analysis. You can read that here.

Before

I came into statistics and data science from chemical engineering (which is what I studied at University). I also minored in philosophy and wrote my honors thesis in the English department.

After graduation I worked in industrial engineering at Michelin North America in plant industrial engineering and continuous improvement and at the central level in industrial engineering, project management and decision support and analysis.

It you want to learn more, check out my resume here.

Short Bio

Michael DeWitt is an applied statistician and data scientist working in infectious disease research at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, the academic core of the non-profit Advocate Health system, the fifth largest healthcare network in the United States. Prior to infectious disease research, Michael has over ten years of experience in manufacturing, higher education analytics, and health care analytics. His research interests involve the detection, surveillance, and dynamics of new and emerging infectious diseases using mathematical and statistical models to improve public health. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Clemson University and a Master’s Degree in Statistics from North Carolina State University.