UCI stochastic/statistical modeling group meetings

Winter 2025

Time: Fridays, 12-1pm

Location: DBH 2222

Schedule (Open an issue if you want to suggest a paper to read):

Week	Date	Presentation	Presenter
1	2025-01-10	Attended Real-Time Genomic Surveillance of Pathogens through Bioinformatics Applications Talk
2	2025-01-17	Catalina's practice job (research) talk	Catalina
3	2025-01-24	No meeting
4	2025-01-31	No meeting
5	2025-02-07	Why are different estimates of the effective reproductive number so different? A case study on COVID-19 in Germany	Jessalyn
6	2025-02-14	Power-law models for infectious disease spread	Thanasi
7	2025-02-21	Fast likelihood calculations for emerging epidemics	Christian
8	2025-02-28	Advancement to Candidacy practice run	Jessalyn
9	2025-03-07	TBD	Thanasi
10	2025-03-14	TBD	Christian
Finals	2025-03-21	TBD	Catalina

Put yourself on the calendar like this:

| 2025-02-31   | [Introduction to statistical inference for infectious diseases](https://github.com/vnminin/stoch_mod_journal_club/issues/1) | Volodymyr |

How to Host Journal Club

This is the Minin Group Guide to hosting journal club, inspired by the many great Leek Group Guides.

What is journal club?

Journal club is a (usually) weekly meeting where someone in the group presents on a paper they're interested in. Unlike seminars, in journal club, everyone is expected to have read the paper before the meeting. On some occasions, journal club time is used for presenting research updates, practice talks, or eating corn in a cup.

How to find a paper to present

• Check the GitHub Issues page.

• Check conference proceedings of recent conferences:

  • EPIDEMICS, MIDAS, ISBA, JSM.

• Check in on some of our favorite research groups:

  • Marc Suchard, Theodore Kypraios, Philip O'Neill, Erik Volz, Forrest Crawford, Erick Matsen, Caroline Colijn, Andrew Gelman, Aki Vehtari, Sarah Cobey, Simon Frost, Håvard Rue, Aaron King, Edward Ionides

• Volodymyr's former students:

  • Andy Magee, Jon Fintzi, Michael Karcher, Jason Xu, Jane Lange, Peter Chi, Julia Palacios, Soyoung Ryu

• Sign up for Google Scholar Alerts for new papers related to Volodymyr's research.

• Sign up for Google Scholar Alerts for your own research.

• Ask Volodymyr.

• Revisit a perennial topic

  • The importance of stupidity in scientific research by Martin A. Schwartz

  • How to Give a Talk by Volodymyr

  • Bayesian Workflow by Andrew Gelman

How to be a presenter

• Before the presentation

  • Skim the paper before recommending it.

  • Show the paper to Volodymyr to get his green light for the chosen paper

  • Tell everyone in advance in the #group_meetings channel on Slack. The earlier the better.

  • Give some context for why you want the group to read the paper. Ex:

    • "This is a foundational paper in a topic I'm starting to get interested in."

    • "This is a brand new paper and it seems exciting, but I'm a little skeptical."

  • Send a reminder message on slack the day before.

• The presentation:

  • The presentation doesn't have to be fancy, screenshots and quotes are okay.

  • Provide context if the paper is on a topic that not everyone is familiar with.

  • Prepare some concluding thoughts on both substance (the science) and style (the presentation):

    • Pretend like you are doing a mini paper review.

    • Some sentence starters:

      • "I liked..."

      • "I didn't like..."

      • "I wasn't sure about..."

  • Prepare some discussion questions.

    • How does this relate to other papers we've read?

    • What did you like/not like?

    • What didn't you understand?

How to be an audience member

• Read the paper.

• Exhibit supportive body language

  • Nod along to show you are following the presentation.

  • Make eye contact with the speaker so they know you are paying attention to them.

  • Smile so the speaker can relax.

• Prepare a few comments / questions.