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.
Funded Research
Publications
- Wang, Jitao, Fang, Yu, Frank, Elena, Walton, Maureen A., Burmeister, Margit, Tewari, Ambuj, Walter Dempsey, NeCamp, Timothy, Sen, Srijan, Wu, Zhenke. 2023. Effectiveness of gamified team competition as mHealth intervention for medical interns: a cluster micro-randomized trial. npj Digital Medicine 6:4.
- Potter, Lindsey N., Jamie Roslyn Yap, Walter Dempsey, Wetter, David W., Inbal Nahum-Shani. 2023. Integrating Intensive Longitudinal Data (ILD) to Inform the Development of Dynamic Theories of Behavior Change and Intervention Design: a Case Study of Scientific and Practical Considerations. Prevention Science
- Inbal Nahum-Shani, Dziak, John J., Venera, Hanna, Pfammatter, Angela F., Spring, Bonnie, Walter Dempsey. 2023. Design of experiments with sequential randomizations on multiple timescales: the hybrid experimental design. Behavior Research Methods
- Walter Dempsey. 2023. Statistical paradoxes in coronavirus case-counts: selection bias, measurement error, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Annals of Applied Statistics.
- John J. Dziak, Daniel Almirall, Walter Dempsey, Catherine Stanger, Inbal Nahum-Shani. 2023. SMART Binary: New Sample Size Planning Resources for SMART Studies with Binary Outcome Measurements. Multivariate Behavioral Research
- Sonali Mishra, Walter Dempsey, Predrag Klasnja. 2023. A Text Messaging Intervention for Priming the Affective Rewards of Exercise in Adults: Protocol for a Microrandomized Trial. JMIR Research Protocols 12(1):e46560.
- Golbus, Jessica R., Gupta, Kashvi, Stevens, Rachel, Jeganathan, V.Swetha E., Luff, Evan, Shi, Jieru, Walter Dempsey, Boyden, Thomas, Mukherjee, Bhramar, Kohnstamm, Sarah, Taralunga, Vlad, Kheterpal, Vik, Murphy, Susan, Klasnja, Predrag, Kheterpal, Sachin, Nallamothu, Brahmajee K.. 2023. A randomized trial of a mobile health intervention to augment cardiac rehabilitation. npj Digital Medicine 6(1):1-8.
- Jiacong Du, Lauren J Beesley, Seunggeun Lee, Xiang Zhou, Walter Dempsey, 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, Walter Dempsey, 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, Walter Dempsey, Zhuo Zhao, Inbal Nahum-Shani, 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., Walter Dempsey, Nock, Matthew K.. 2022. Untitled. Youth Suicide Prevention and Intervention: Best Practices and Policy Implications :21-28.
- Shi, J, Wu, Z, Walter Dempsey. 2022. Assessing Time-Varying Causal Effect Moderation in the Presence of Cluster-Level Treatment Effect Heterogeneity and Interference. Biometrika
- Harry Crane, Walter Dempsey. 2021. A statistical framework for modern network science. Statistical Science 36(1):51-67.
- Yu Wang, Conrad Hougen, Brandon Oselio, Walter Dempsey, Alfred Hero. 2021. A Geometry-Driven Longitudinal Topic Model. Harvard Data Science Review 3(2)
- Walter Dempsey, Brandon Oselio, Alfred Hero. 2021. Hierarchical Network Models for Exchangeable Structured Interaction Processes. Journal of the American Statistical Association
- Moreno, Alexander, Zhenke Wu, Jamie Roslyn Yap, Lam, Cho, Wetter, David, Inbal Nahum-Shani, Walter Dempsey, Rehg, James M.. 2021. A Robust Functional EM Algorithm for Incomplete Panel Count Data. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 33:19828-19838.
- Walter Dempsey. 2021. Exchangeable, Markov multi-state survival process. Statistica Sinca 31:1807-1828.
- Inbal Nahum-Shani, Lindsey N. Potter, Cho Y. Lam, Jamie R. Yap, Alexander Moreno, Rebecca Stoffel, Zhenke Wu, Neng Wan, Walter Dempsey, 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, Walter Dempsey, Peng Liao, Marianne Menictas, Susan Murphy, Inbal Nahum-Shani, 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.
- Walter Dempsey, 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, Walter Dempsey. 2019. Relational exchangeability. Journal of Applied Probability 56(1):192-208.
- Walter Dempsey, Peter McCullagh. 2018. Survival models and health sequences. Lifetime Data Analysis 24(4):550-584.
- Harry Crane, Walter Dempsey. 2018. Edge Exchangeable Models for Interaction Networks. Journal of the American Statistical Association 113(523):1311-1326.
- Walter Dempsey, Peter McCullagh. 2017. Exchangeable Markov survival processes and weak continuity of predictive distributions. Electronic Journal of Statistics 11(2):5406-5451.
- Walter Dempsey, Liao, Peng, Klasnja, Pedja, Inbal Nahum-Shani, Murphy, Susan. 2015. Randomised trials for the Fitbit generation. Significance 12(6):20-23.