About me

I am an assistant policy researcher at RAND Corporation, a Ph.D. candidate at Pardee RAND Graduate School, an Adjunct Instructor at USC Sol Price School of Public Policy, and a visiting graduate student at Argonne National Laboratory.

My recent research uses modeling to inform health policy. Most of my recent work focused on pressing COVID-19 policy questions. My work generated recommendations for crafting COVID-19 reopening plans, based on a stress-test of COVID-19 reopening strategies. I also helped build RAND’s COVID-19 Policy Tool, which became RAND’s most popular research of 2020. I am passionate about tackling complex and deeply uncertain policy questions with modeling and computing.

I also teach statistics at USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. Prior to coming to the US, I was a lecturer at UNISINOS, where I taught simulation modeling and other courses in engineering and management programs. Besides teaching and doing research, I enjoy working on consulting projects with a modeling component.

Here you will find links to my recent publications, tools and software I helped to build and more. If you find any of this interesting and want to connect, follow me on twitter or get in touch!

Publications

My recent research leverages modeling and Decision Under Deep Uncertainty methods to inform pressing health policy decision-analytic problems.

Sarah A Nowak, Pedro Nascimento de Lima, Raffaele Vardavas
November 2021 Pre-print (medRxiv)
Should We Mitigate or Suppress the Next Pandemic? Time-Horizons and Costs Shape Optimal Social Distancing Strategies

Should We Mitigate or Suppress the Next Pandemic? Time-Horizons and Costs Shape Optimal Social Distancing Strategies

This paper uses a mathematical optimization procedure to find optimal social distancing strategies under a wide range of scenarios.
Source Document DOI
Pedro Nascimento de Lima, Robert Lempert, Raffaele Vardavas, Lawrence Baker, Jeanne Ringel, Carolyn M. Rutter, Jonathan Ozik, Nicholson Collier
October 2021 PLOS ONE
Reopening California: Seeking robust, non-Dominated COVID-19 exit strategies

Reopening California: Seeking robust, non-Dominated COVID-19 exit strategies

This paper uses the Robust Decision Making approach to stress-test California’s COVID-19 reopening strategy considering a range of uncertainties.
Code Source Document
Raffaele Vardavas, Pedro Nascimento de Lima, Paul K. Davis, Andrew M. Parker, Lawrence Baker
September 2021 Journal on Policy and Complex Systems

Modeling Infectious Behaviors: The Need to Account for Behavioral Adaptation in COVID-19 Models

This essay discusses the need to account for behavioral adaptation in COVID-19 models.
Source Document
Pedro Nascimento de Lima, Raffaele Vardavas, Lawrence Baker, Jeanne Ringel, Robert Lempert, Carolyn M. Rutter, Jonathan Ozik
May 2021 RAND Perspective
Reopening Under Uncertainty: Stress-Testing California's COVID-19 Exit Strategy

Reopening Under Uncertainty: Stress-Testing California's COVID-19 Exit Strategy

We used the Robust Decision Making approach to stress-test California’s COVID-19 reopening strategy. This Perspective presents lessons learned from these experiments and outlines four characteristics of the best reopening strategies.
Source Document DOI
Lawrence Baker, Pedro Nascimento de Lima, Jeanne Ringel, Raffaele Vardavas
May 2021 The RAND Blog
Will the United States Declare Freedom from COVID-19 Too Soon?

Will the United States Declare Freedom from COVID-19 Too Soon?

We analyzed what could happen with COVID-19 deaths in the United States if restrictions all go away on July 4. Fully reopening the economy before Biden’s vaccination target was met doubled the average number of COVID-19 deaths between Independence Day and the end of the year.
Source Document
See all publications

Recent & Upcoming Presentations

Here you will find links to past or upcoming presentations.

Policy Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Mar 28, 2022 10:15 AM APPAM 2021, Austin, Texas
Informing COVID-19 Policy Under Uncertainty
Nov 29, 2021 9:00 AM DMDU 2021 Webinar Series
Towards Modeling Infectious Behaviors
Nov 19, 2021 10:00 AM MIDAS Webinar
A Primer on Robust Decision Making for Health Policy Modelers
Nov 11, 2021 8:30 AM CISNET Annual Meeting
Reopening California - Seeking Robust, Non-Dominated COVID-19 Exit Strategies
May 12, 2021 2:00 PM MIDAS Annual Conference
See all talks

Software & Tools

As an engineer by training, I like to build stuff. Here you will find links to tools and software I helped develop.

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All Tool R Package Code Visualization

Allegheny County COVID-19 Tool

This tool tracks COVID-19 disparities in Allegheny County.
Allegheny County COVID-19 Tool

Reopening California Code Repository

Code Repository for our paper stress-testing California’s Reopening strategy.
Reopening California Code Repository

COVID-19 Decision Support Tool

A Decision Support Tool to help US states respond to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
COVID-19 Decision Support Tool

Artificial Intelligence in Clinical Care Evidence Map

An Evidence Map of Artificial Intelligence applications in Clinical Care.
Artificial Intelligence in Clinical Care Evidence Map

Gerbil

Gerbil is an R package for multiple imputation to handle missing data.
Gerbil

The "Diet Tool"

Helps people understand effects of diet improvement on long-term health and economic outcomes.
The "Diet Tool"

Arena2R

An R package for Arena Users. Creates plots and summary statistics from Arena output files.
Arena2R

Blog Posts

Before my PhD life, I used to write blog posts. You’ll still find some of those here.

Sep 3, 2019 1 min read Slides

Slides - Simulação (por Eventos Discretos), Sistemas de Informação e outros

Durante o meu tempo como como professor na UNISINOS no curso de Engenharia de Produção, acumulei uma boa quantidade de slides. Provavelmente não vou utilizar estes slides nos próximos 5 anos, portanto nada mais razoável do que compartilhar!
Apr 28, 2019 7 min read R Blogs, R

Teaching Factory Physics Flow Benchmarking with R and Many-Objective Visuals

Teaching to seasoned managers in MBE classes is challenging. While it’s important to bring new thoughts and ideas and not sound repetitive, it is necessary to provide a theoretical basis for experienced people with diverse backgrounds.
See all posts

Let’s Connect!

Couldn’t find what you are looking for? Do you find any of this interesting? Let’s connect!