Department of Statistics Professor, Bo Li has been selected for the prestigious Associate Research Appointment in the Center for Advanced Study (CAS) for the 2018-2019 academic year. Each year, the tenured and untenured University of Illinois faculty are invited to submit scholarly or creative proposals for consideration by the Center’s permanent Professors. Faculty members with winning proposals are appointed Associates and Fellows and awarded one semester of release time to pursue their projects in the coming academic year.

Professor Li’s research will focus on the prediction of new human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) diagnosis rates at the county level using publicly available data.

The research proposes a powerful Bayesian hierarchical models (BHM) to integrate the Poisson sampling distribution and the temporal dynamic pattern of HIV while taking the spatial dependency into consideration. Based on the proposed model and the publicly available HIV data and demographic information, the research will provide maps of predictions together with their uncertainties for the next year to its latest available year.

HIV infections are life-changing events to those inflicted and if left untreated can lead to acquired immunodeficiency disease (AIDS). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that although nationally the number of newly diagnosed cases of HIV has declined by 19% in the last decade, progress has been uneven. The National HIV/AIDS Strategy identifies a key goal of intensifying efforts in the communities with the greatest concentration of HIV cases. Developing models to predict future diagnoses should allow health departments to intervene before the surge in new diagnoses occurs.

In accordance with the Center’s mission, these appointments provide an incentive to pursue the highest level of scholarly achievement. They also provide faculty members with an unusual opportunity to explore new ideas and demonstrate early results.

With the Professors, Associates and Fellows form the intellectual core of the Center for Advanced Study community. They are invited to participate in CAS events and have opportunities to present their work to the CAS community. Thus, each year brings together the established and the new in an ever-changing flux of ideas and disciplines.

Please see: Center for Advanced Study Future Associates and Fellows Research Appointments for a complete list of the 2018-2019 appointments.