Helen Jenkins, Institute Junior Faculty Fellow, to Give Wed@Hariri/Meet Our Fellows Talk

11:00 AM – 12:30 PM on Thursday, April 26, 2018
Refreshments & networking at 10:45 AM
Hariri Institute for Computing
111 Cummington Mall, Room 180

This event has been rescheduled from its original date of March 21, 2018 and will now take place on April 26, 2018.

The Hariri Institute for Computing continues its 2017-2018 “Meet Our Fellows” series, which will showcase the Institute’s 2017 Junior Faculty Fellows and Graduate Student Fellows. Prior to Junior Faculty Fellow presentations, a Graduate Student Fellow will give a 5-minute preview of his or her current research.

Meet Our Fellows/Research Preview
Wenkang (Winko) An
Hariri Graduate Fellow, Hariri Institute for Computing
PhD Candidate, Biomedical Engineering (ENG)

Exploring Auditory Selective Attention Using Multi-modality Neuroimaging Techniques: Winko focuses on developing a method to integrate electroencephalography with functional magnetic resonance imaging data, which would help draw a both temporally and spatially resolved map of information flow in human brain. The tool will be used to explore the neural mechanism of attentional modulation in a spatial or non-spatial auditory selective attention task.

Meet Our Fellows/Junior Faculty Fellow Presentation
Helen Jenkins
Junior Faculty Fellow, Hariri Institute for Computing
Assistant Professor, Biostatistics (SPH)

With an introduction by Josée Dupuis, Professor and Chair of Biostatistics, Boston University School of Public Health.

Making Something Out of (Almost) Nothing: Filling in the Gaps Around Tuberculosis Surveillance Data

Abstract: Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading infectious cause of death globally. However, routine surveillance data on TB notifications are limited, in terms of their completeness, for multiple reasons including problems with the diagnosis of TB, and limited resources for data collection systems, especially in more rural areas. Therefore, in order to obtain a more accurate picture of the burden and epidemiology of TB, we need to identify novel data sources and/or methods to account for deficiencies in TB surveillance data. I will describe work that I have done to estimate the burden of disease and mortality due to TB specifically among children, which now forms the basis of the World Health Organization official estimates. I will also describe ongoing work to identify geographic hot-spots of drug-resistant TB within Moldova and South Africa and discuss future plans and questions to be answered.

Bio: Helen Jenkins was selected as an Institute Junior Faculty Fellow in fall 2017. Helen has a M.Sc. in Biostatistics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a Ph.d. in Infectious Disease Epidemiology from Imperial College, London. She is interested in novel ways to analyze data that can have a public health impact in the field of infectious diseases. In recent years, she has focused on tuberculosis including developing new estimates of pediatric TB incidence and mortality, and spatial methods to understand geographic heterogeneity of TB.