Assistant Professor of Biostatistics, School of Public Health and Research Assistant Professor, Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research
Biography
Walter Dempsey is an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics and Assistant Research Professor at the Institute for Social Research. His research focuses on statistical methods for digital and mobile health. His current work involves three complementary research themes: (1) experimental design and data analytic methods to inform multi-stage decision making in health; (2) statistical modeling of complex longitudinal and survival data; and (3) statistical modeling of complex relational structures such as interaction networks. In the coming years, he will continue to design and apply novel statistical methodologies to make sense of complex longitudinal, survival, and relational datasets. This work will inform decision making in health by aiding in intervention evaluation and development. Prior to joining, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Statistics at Harvard University where he worked within the Statistical Reinforcement Learning Lab under the supervision of Susan Murphy. He received his PhD in Statistics at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Peter McCullagh.
Publications
- Jiacong Du, Lauren J Beesley, Seunggeun Lee, Xiang Zhou, Dempsey,Walter, Bhramar Mukherjee. 2022. Optimal diagnostic test allocation strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Statistics in Medicine 41(2):310-327.
- V. Swetha Jeganathan, Jessica R. Golbus, Kashvi Gupta, Evan Luff, Dempsey,Walter, Thomas Boyden, Melvyn Rubenfire, Brahmar Mukherjee, Predrag Klasnja, Sachin Kheterpa, Brahmajee K. Nallamothu. 2022. Virtual AppLication-Supported Environment to INcrease Exercise During Cardiac Rehabilitation Study (VALENTINE) Study: Rationale and Design. American Heart Journal 248:53-62.
- Adam Horwitz, Ewa Cryz, Nadia Al-Dajani, Dempsey,Walter, Zhuo Zhao, Nahum-Shani,Inbal, Srijan Sen. 2022. Utilizing daily mood diaries and wearable sensor data to predict depression and suicidal ideation among medical interns. Journal of Affective Disorders 313:1-7.
- Wang, Shirley B., Dempsey,Walter, Nock, Matthew K.. 2022. Untitled. Youth Suicide Prevention and Intervention: Best Practices and Policy Implications :21-28.
- Harry Crane, Dempsey,Walter. 2021. A statistical framework for modern network science. Statistical Science 36(1):51-67.
- Yu Wang, Conrad Hougen, Brandon Oselio, Dempsey,Walter, Alfred Hero. 2021. A Geometry-Driven Longitudinal Topic Model. Harvard Data Science Review 3(2)
- Dempsey,Walter, Brandon Oselio, Alfred Hero. 2021. Hierarchical Network Models for Exchangeable Structured Interaction Processes. Journal of the American Statistical Association
- Moreno, Alexander, Zhenke Wu, Yap,Jamie Roslyn, Lam, Cho, Wetter, David, Nahum-Shani,Inbal, Dempsey,Walter, Rehg, James M.. 2021. A Robust Functional EM Algorithm for Incomplete Panel Count Data. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 33:19828-19838.
- Dempsey,Walter. 2021. Exchangeable, Markov multi-state survival process. Statistica Sinca 31:1807-1828.
- Nahum-Shani,Inbal, Lindsey N. Potter, Cho Y. Lam, Jamie R. Yap, Alexander Moreno, Rebecca Stoffel, Zhenke Wu, Neng Wan, Dempsey,Walter, Santosh Kumar, Emre Ertin, Susan A. Murphy, James M. Rehg, David W. Wetter. 2021. The mobile assistance for regulating smoking (MARS) micro-randomized trial design protocol. Contemporary Clinical Trials 110:106513.
- Samuel L. Battalio, David E. Conroya, Dempsey,Walter, Peng Liao, Marianne Menictas, Susan Murphy, Nahum-Shani,Inbal, Tianchen Qian, Santosh Kumar, Bonnie Spring. 2021. Sense2Stop: A micro-randomized trial using wearable sensors to optimize a just-in-time-adaptive stress management intervention for smoking relapse prevention. Contemporary Clinical Trials 109:106534.
- Dempsey,Walter, Peng Liao, Santosh Kumar, Susan A. Murphy. 2020. The stratified micro-randomized trial design: Sample size considerations for testing nested causal effects of time-varying treatments. Annals of Applied Statistics 14(2):661-684.
- Harry Crane, Dempsey,Walter. 2019. Relational exchangeability. Journal of Applied Probability 56(1):192-208.
- Dempsey,Walter, Peter McCullagh. 2018. Survival models and health sequences. Lifetime Data Analysis 24(4):550-584.
- Harry Crane, Dempsey,Walter. 2018. Edge Exchangeable Models for Interaction Networks. Journal of the American Statistical Association 113(523):1311-1326.
- Dempsey,Walter, Peter McCullagh. 2017. Exchangeable Markov survival processes and weak continuity of predictive distributions. Electronic Journal of Statistics 11(2):5406-5451.
- Dempsey,Walter, Liao, Peng, Klasnja, Pedja, Nahum-Shani,Inbal, Murphy, Susan. 2015. Randomised trials for the Fitbit generation. Significance 12(6):20-23.