Abraham Flaxman
Associate ProfessorAbraham Flaxman, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Health Metrics Sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. He is currently leading the development of a simulation platform to derive “what-if” results from Global Burden of Disease estimates and is engaged in methodological and operational research on verbal autopsy. Dr. Flaxman has previously designed software tools such as DisMod-MR that IHME uses to estimate the Global Burden of Disease, and the Bednet Stock-and-Flow Model, which has produced estimates of insecticide-treated net coverage in sub-Saharan Africa. This work uses Integrative Systems Modeling to combine a system dynamics model of process with a statistical model of data to bring together all available sources of information.
Prior to being named associate professor, Dr. Flaxman was an assistant professor at IHME, a Post-Graduate Fellow at IHME, and before that he was a post-doctoral fellow at Microsoft Research.
Originally from Evanston, IL, Dr. Flaxman earned his BS in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned his PhD in Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization from Carnegie Mellon University in 2006.
Dr. Flaxman has written his popular blog, http://healthyalgorithms.com, since 2008. His posts cover mathematics, computer science, and his research at IHME.
IHME was established at the University of Washington in Seattle in 2007. Its mission is to deliver to the world timely, relevant, and scientifically valid evidence to improve health policy and practice.