About

Hi! I’m Adam – I like statistics, especially applied methods work to support strategic decision making.

I work on epidemic forecasting with the CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics. Currently, I’m developing and applying the epidist package for estimating epidemiological delay distributions. I also support state-level modelling of time-varying reproduction numbers and respiratory infection nowcasts.

I completed my PhD “Bayesian spatio-temporal methods for small-area estimation of HIV indicators” at Imperial College London supervised by Seth Flaxman and Jeffrey Imai-Eaton. I was part of the StatML CDT, HIV Inference Group, and Machine Learning & Global Health Network. I worked on comparing models for area-level spatial correlation, estimating district-level HIV risk group proportions (Howes et al. 2023), and developing deterministic Bayesian inference methods (Howes et al. 2025+) motivated by the Naomi small-area evidence synthesis model (Eaton et al. 2021; Esra et al. 2024).

I’ve also spent time at the MIT Media Lab contributing to the Nucleic Acid Observatory project for detecting biological threats, and at the University of Waterloo working on deterministic Bayesian inference methods with Alex Stringer. After my PhD, I worked at the University of Oxford modelling food security with the WFP (Ishida et al. 2025), and contributed an individual-based model supporting Blueprint Biosecurity’s far UVC roadmap.

For anyone in and around London, and interested in chatting statistics or other topics, let me know! I also welcome constructive feedback – feel free to use this anonymous form if you’d like to share thoughts on how I can improve personally or professionally.

Eaton, Jeffrey W., Laura Dwyer-Lindgren, Steve Gutreuter, Megan O’Driscoll, Oliver Stevens, Sumali Bajaj, Rob Ashton, et al. 2021. “Naomi: A New Modelling Tool for Estimating HIV Epidemic Indicators at the District Level in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Journal of the International AIDS Society 24 (S5): e25788. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1002/jia2.25788.
Esra, Rachel, Mpho Mmelesi, Akeem T. Ketlogetswe, Timothy M. Wolock, Adam Howes, Tlotlo Nong, Matshelo Tina Matlhaga, Siphiwe Ratladi, Dinah Ramaabya, and Jeffrey W. Imai-Eaton. 2024. “Improved Indicators for Subnational Unmet Antiretroviral Therapy Need in the Health System: Updates to the Naomi Model in 2023.” JAIDS Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes 95 (1S): e24–33. https://doi.org/10.1097/QAI.0000000000003324.
Howes, Adam, Kathryn A. Risher, Van Kính Nguyen, Oliver Stevens, Katherine M. Jia, Timothy M. Wolock, Rachel T. Esra, et al. 2023. “Spatio-temporal estimates of HIV risk group proportions for adolescent girls and young women across 13 priority countries in sub-Saharan Africa.” PLOS Global Public Health 3 (4): 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0001731.
Howes, Adam, Alex Stringer, Seth R. Flaxman, and Jeffrey W. Eaton. 2025+. “Fast approximate Bayesian inference of HIV indicators using PCA adaptive Gauss-Hermite quadrature,” 2025+.
Ishida, Sahoko, Adam Howes, Valerie Bradley, Elizaveta Semenova, Theo Rashid, Silinganisiwe Dzumbunu, Sumali Bajaj, et al. 2025. “Real-Time Small Area Estimation of Food Security in Zimbabwe: Integrating Mobile-Phone and Face-to-Face Surveys Using Joint Multilevel Regression and Poststratification.” https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.03517.

References