Speaker: Sunil Rao, Professor, Division of Biostatistics & Health Data Science, University of Minnesota

Title: Modernizing Mixed Model Prediction

Abstract: Mixed models have widespread appeal in many areas of statistical modeling from biostatistics to small area estimation.  I will conduct a tour of some recent developments in both methodology and application related to mixed model prediction (MMP) that I have contributed to or are outgrowths of those methods.  The talk will review earlier work including observed best prediction (OBP) and classified mixed model prediction (CMMP) and then discuss some newer developments.  This includes multivariate MMP for prediction of the genetically controlled portion of DNA methylation in cervical cancer and contextual vulnerability analysis for predicting overdose deaths.  Finally if time permits, I will discuss MMP in the context of making projections potentially outside the range of the training data.   This is joint work with a number of  PhD students over the years, Jiming Jiang at UC, Davis and Thuan Nguyen at Oregon Health and Science University.