James Odei, PhD

Dr. Odei comes to the college with a PhD in Statistics. Prior to joining the College of Public Health's Division of Biostatistics, he served as a visiting assistant professor at the College of Arts and Sciences in the Department of Statistics, where he taught both undergraduate and graduate courses.

His research interests include spatial, temporal, spatio-temporal modeling using Bayesian methods and hierarchical modeling and applications to ecology and health. He believes interdisciplinary collaboration is key to making scientific progress.

Spatial, Temporal, and Spatio-Temporal Statistics, Environmental and Ecological Statistics, Bayesian Hierarchical Modeling, Statistical Data Visualization, Infectious Diseases (HIV/AIDS, TB, etc.), Environmental Epidemiology, Statistical methods for observational studies in population health, health outcome research and social sciences, Behavioral Medicine and Psychology, Breast Cancer Prevention

• Ph.D., Statistics, Utah State University (USU), Logan-Utah, 2014
• M.S., Statistics, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), 2007
• BSc., Mathematics, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Tech., Kumasi-Ghana, 2001

• PUBHBIO 2210: Biostatistics for Public Health Research
• PUBHBIO 6270: Introduction to SAS for Public Health Students

• USU Robins Award for Graduate Teaching Assistant of the Year, 2014
• USU College of Science Graduate Student Teacher of the Year Award, 2014
• USU Dept. of Mathematics & Statistics Graduate Student Teacher of the Year Award, 2014
• Utah State Legislature Official Citation of Honor, 2012
• American Red Cross (Northern Utah Chapter) Community Good Samaritan Award, 2012
• People Magazine (November 7, 2011 Edition) Hero of the Year Award, 2012
• UNLV Best Graduate Teaching Assistant Award, 2006

Odei, J.B., J. Symanzik, and M.B. Hooten (2014). "A Bayesian hierarchical model for forecasting of intermountain snowpack dynamics," Environmetrics, 25 (5), 324–340. DOI: 10.1002/ENV.2275.

Wilson, T.L., J.B. Odei, M.B. Hooten, and T.C. Edwards (2010). "Hierarchical spatial models for predicting pygmy rabbit distribution and relative abundance," Journal of Applied Ecology. 47, 401– 409. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2664.2009.01766.x (BBC News Feature).