Lorna Deeth

Education and Employment Background

Dr. Lorna Deeth received her PhD in Statistics from the University of Guelph in 2012. After working as an instructor and Mathematics Development Programs Coordinator at Brock University, Deeth rejoined the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Guelph in 2015. She is now an Associate Professor and currently serves as the Undergraduate Faculty Advisor for the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

Research Themes

Prof. Deeth’s research interests include infectious disease modelling; spatial and spatiotemporal statistical methods; and surveillance models as applied to (veterinary) epidemiology, environmental science, and ecotoxicology. Key research topics include:

1. Modelling infectious diseases. Prof. Deeth has developed a latent conditional individual-level model for infectious diseases, as well as investigated the effect of clustering individuals to reduce the computation burden associated with these models. She and her students are comparing model predictive capabilities versus computation expense when using a population reduction technique (e.g. clustering) compared to approximation techniques (e.g. Bayesian computation) for fitting individual-level models.
2. Environmental Toxicology. Prof. Deeth also conducts collaborative research that explores models for environmental effects monitoring programs.

Highlights

• Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award, College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, 2018
• NSERC Discovery Grant (Early Career Researcher) and Discovery Launch Supplement, 2018
• Coordinator, Statistics Learning Centre, University of Guelph, 2019-present
• Ontario Representative, Statistical Society of Canada, 2017-2018, 2019-2020
• Statistical consultant for peer-reviewed journal, Veterinary Pathology, 2015-2021

Media Coverage

CEPS: Statistics in Fish Health