Johannes Bracher - intro

Hi everyone,

so I’ll briefly present myself, hoping that will break the ice :slight_smile:

I’m a biostatistician and I’m currently a postdoc at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Heidelberg Institute of Theoretical Studies in Germany. Before that I did my PhD at University of Zurich, working mainly on models for count data from routine surveillance of seasonal infectious diseases and forecast evaluation). And before that I got a BSc and MSc in Statistics as well as a BA in Sociology, all from LMU Munich.

During the pandemic I’ve worked on various collaborative forecasting and nowcasting projects, currently focusing on nowcasting of German hospitalization numbers. I have a general interest in neutral methods comparisons, in particular in real-time applications. When I find time I also do some slightly more theoretical stuff on count time series.

In terms of future plans I’m currently helping to launch a new project on nowcasting and short-term forecasting seasonal respiratory diseases in Germany. So we’ll certainly have some use cases and example data we can contribute. For me epinowcast is an opportunity to contribute some experiences and ideas to a toolbox that will be more useful than what we currently have (scattered across git repositories). We’re a small group and in terms of time and breadth of expertise would struggle to launch such a project on our own. So this collaboration is a nice opportunity for us :slight_smile: I haven’t contributed any code yet, but hope to do so soon.

Feel free to check out my personal website and Twitter, where you can also get in touch.

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