Reich Receives Humboldt Research Fellowship

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Nicholas Reich, associate professor of biostatistics, has received an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers to conduct research at Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) of Munich. The fellowship allows experienced researchers to carry out long-term research in Germany. Reich will collaborate through July 2020 with hosts in LMU Munich’s department of statistics and affiliated faculty in the department of biometry and biostatistics to create real-time infectious disease forecasts for Germany.

“It is a real honor to receive this fellowship,” says Reich. “This support from the Humboldt Foundation enables me to explore new collaborative opportunities while broadening the modeling expertise of my research lab.”

The Humboldt Foundation promotes academic cooperation between scientists and scholars from abroad and from Germany.

Reich is an infectious disease forecasting specialist and the director of one of two new national Influenza Forecasting Centers of Excellence, funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As part of this work, he leads the FluSight Network, a research consortium that provides real-time infectious disease forecasting models for seasonal influenza in the United States. Using publicly available data on influenza and other infectious diseases in Germany, as well as data available through the World Health Organization (WHO), Reich plans to collaborate with LMU Munich to establish real-time ensemble forecasts of influenza outbreaks for Germany.

Over the course of his proposed 10-month research program, he plans to develop new forecasting models in collaboration with LMU data scientists and statisticians that can be used to forecast influenza outbreaks in Germany. Along with models that his research lab has developed for forecasting influenza in the U.S., these new models will be fed into a single “ensemble” model. This ensemble will provide a single, robust forecast of the influenza season in each of 16 German states.

This collaboration, he expects, will provide original insights about the predictability of influenza epidemics in Germany and, more broadly, about the generalizability of forecasting methodologies that have worked well for forecasting influenza in other settings around the world. In the U.S., the CDC uses weekly influenza forecasts to inform communications with the general public and state and local health officials. Forecasts can be used by health officials to anticipate periods of high healthcare utilization and high demand for anti-viral medications.

“The WHO has recently launched an initiative to support modeling and forecasting of seasonal influenza outbreaks to assist with international public health efforts. This opportunity to work with scientists at a leading research university in Europe will help integrate our research into this larger conversation of how forecasting can assist public health response to outbreaks,” Reich says. “Furthermore, LMU has a rich culture of research collaboration between scientific experts, statisticians, biostatisticians, and computer scientists. This will serve as a fertile environment for this naturally collaborative research program.”