Gary Vestal


Epidemiological Data Scientist @ Emory's Simbiosys Lab

News


  • Oct 2018     Made a website. Finally!

  • Aug 2022     Updates abound. Man, it's been a while, hasn't it?

About


Formal Bio

Innovations in disease monitoring and modeling, such as CDR records, contact tracing, and causal models, have made tremendous impacts in developed nations for disease containment. However, many of these innovations have not yet been implemented in developing nations, or may not be compatible at all with their infrastructures. I seek to address this by adapting the cutting-edge techniques of data science and epidemiology to combatting disease in developing regions, using the wealth of technology in academia to help those who can benefit from it most.



Publications


Designing Synthetic Positive Controls for Highly Multiplexed Amplicon Sequencing ICEID 2022 Poster

Student Poster Session Best Poster Award for presentation of: Studying Self-Assembly of Carboxysome Proteins with Netlogo

Projects


  • Epidemiology of Complex Infections: Disambiguating Constituent Strains of Multiply-Infected Samples of Malaria and E. Coli

  • Predicting Epidemics Through Cellphone Metadata

  • Predicting Student Performance From Coding Styles

"Projects"


  • Bad Pokemon Battle: A video game tribute to the greatest tattoo of 2015. For copyright reasons, the game is no longer available, but you can see gameplay footage here and here.

  • Bach's Little Organ Fugue in G Minor / Space Jam Remix [LINK].

Experience


~
S No Position, Organisation From - To Work Done
1 Research Fellow, CDC BIOME June 2021 - Present
  • Disambiguate complex E. Coli infections
  • Evaluate synthetic positive AMR controls
1 Intern, TIAA Jun 2018 - August 2018
  • Develop innovative technologies and interfaces to improve the digital experience for TIAA’s customers and employees
  • Tested software updates for TIAA’s PlanFocus mobile app
2 Social Science Computational Researcher, Clemson University January 2018 - May 2018
  • Creating agent-based models to study the effects of belief curation on employment behaviors
3 Software Developer, Seneca Treehouse Project May 2017 - August 2017
  • Working to construct Permaculture Learning Centers around the globe.
  • Website development and maintenance.
  • Contract construction through Toolhouse Tools and Training Program.
4 Intern, Oak Ridge National Lab January 2015 - August 2016
  • Designing agent-based modeling software for simulating molecular self-assembly and emergent behavior.
  • Modeling self-assembly of bacterial microcompartments.

Contact Me


Email(s) | gkvesta at emory dot edu | sio6 at cdc dot gov