Faculty Bio - John J. Grefenstette, PhD
Professor, Biostatistics
Director, Public Health Dynamics Laboratory
Education
Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh, 1980
M.S, University of Pittsburgh, 1978
B.S., Carnegie Mellon University, 1975
Research Interests
The design, implementation and analysis of large-scale simulation models with applications to public health dynamics, including infectious disease epidemics and human health behavior change. Major projects supported include the University of Pittsburgh Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS) Center of Excellence, funded by NIGMS, and the Vaccine Modeling Initiative, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Other research areas include modeling community crime intervention programs, and open access public health databases.
Selected Publications
Potter MA, Brown ST, Lee BY, Grefenstette J, Keane CR, Lin CJ, Quinn SC, Stebbins S, Sweeney PM, Burke DS. Preparedness for pandemics: does variation among states affect the nation as a whole? J Public Health Manag Pract. 2012 May-Jun;18(3):233-40. PubMed PMID: 22473116.
Shim E, Grefenstette JJ, Albert SM, Cakouros BE, Burke DS. A game dynamic model for vaccine skeptics and vaccine believers: measles as an example. J Theor Biol. 2012 Feb 21;295:194-203. Epub 2011 Nov 15. PubMed PMID: 22108239.
Cooley P, Brown S, Cajka J, Chasteen B, Ganapathi L, Grefenstette J, Hollingsworth CR, Lee BY, Levine B, Wheaton WD, Wagener DK. The role of subway travel in an influenza epidemic: a New York City simulation. J Urban Health. 2011 Oct;88(5):982-95. PubMed PMID: 21826584; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3191213.
Brown ST, Tai JH, Bailey RR, Cooley PC, Wheaton WD, Potter MA, Voorhees RE, Lejeune M, Grefenstette JJ, Burke DS, McGlone SM, Lee BY. Would school closure for the 2009 H1N1 influenza epidemic have been worth the cost? A computational simulation of Pennsylvania. BMC Public Health. 2011 May 20;11(1):353. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 21599920.
Lee BY, Brown ST, Bailey RR, Zimmerman RK, Potter MA, McGlone SM, Cooley PC, Grefenstette JJ, Zimmer SM, Wheaton WD, Quinn SC, Voorhees RE, Burke DS. The benefits to all of ensuring equal and timely access to influenza vaccines in poor communities. Health Aff (Millwood). 2011 Jun;30(6):1141-50. PubMed PMID: 21653968.
Lee BY, Brown ST, Cooley P, Grefenstette JJ, Zimmerman RK, Zimmer SM, Potter MA, Rosenfeld R, Wheaton WD, Wiringa AE, Bacon KM, Burke DS. Vaccination deep into a pandemic wave potential mechanism for a "third wave" and the impact of vaccination. Am J Prev Med. 2010 Nov;39(5):e21-9. PubMed PMID: 20965375; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2975455.
Yonas MA, Borrebach JD, Burke JG, Brown ST, Philp KD, Burke DS, Grefenstette JJ. Dynamic simulation of community crime and crime-reporting behavior. J. Salerno, et al (Eds). SBP 2011, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6589, pp 97-104, 2011.
Lee BY, Brown ST, Cooley P, Potter MA, Wheaton WD, Voorhees RE, Stebbins S, Grefenstette JJ, Zimmer SM, Zimmerman RK, Assi TM, Bailey RR, Wagener DK, Burke DS. Simulating school closure strategies to mitigate an influenza epidemic. J Public Health Manag Pract. 2010 May-Jun;16(3):252-61. PubMed PMID: 20035236.
Lee BY, Brown ST, Korch G, Cooley PC, Zimmerman RK, Wheaton WD, Zimmer SM, Grefenstette JJ, Bailey RR, Assi TM, Burke DS. A computer simulation of vaccine prioritization, allocation, and rationing during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic. Vaccine. 2010 May 15. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 20483192.
Lee BY, Brown ST, Cooley PC, Zimmerman RK, Wheaton WD, Zimmer SM, Grefenstette JJ, Assi TM, Furphy TJ, Wagener DK, Burke DS. A computer simulation of employee vaccination to mitigate an influenza epidemic. Am J Prev Med. 2010 Mar;38(3):247-57. Epub 2009 Dec 30. PubMed PMID: 20042311; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2833347.
Gillette TA, Grefenstette JJ. On comparing neuronal morphologies with the constrained tree-edit-distance. Neuroinformatics. 2009 Sep;7(3):191-4. Epub 2009 Jul 28. Review. PubMed PMID: 19636974.
Villa-Angulo R, Matukumalli LK, Gill CA, Choi J, Van Tassell CP, Grefenstette JJ. High-resolution haplotype block structure in the cattle genome. BMC Genet. 2009 Apr 24;10:19. PMID: 19393054; PMCID: PMC2684545.
Bovine HapMap Consortium, Gibbs RA, Taylor JF, Van Tassell CP, Barendse W, Eversole KA, Gill CA, Green RD, Hamernik DL, Kappes SM, Lien S, Matukumalli LK, McEwan JC, Nazareth LV, Schnabel RD, Weinstock GM, Wheeler DA, Ajmone-Marsan P, Boettcher PJ, Caetano AR, Garcia JF, Hanotte O, Mariani P, Skow LC, Sonstegard TS, Williams JL, Diallo B, Hailemariam L, Martinez ML, Morris CA, Silva LO, Spelman RJ, Mulatu W, Zhao K, Abbey CA, Agaba M, Araujo FR, Bunch RJ, Burton J, Gorni C, Olivier H, Harrison BE, Luff B, Machado MA, Mwakaya J, Plastow G, Sim W, Smith T, Thomas MB, Valentini A, Williams P, Womack J, Woolliams JA, Liu Y, Qin X, Worley KC, Gao C, Jiang H, Moore SS, Ren Y, Song XZ, Bustamante CD, Hernandez RD, Muzny DM, Patil S, San Lucas A, Fu Q, Kent MP, Vega R, Matukumalli A, McWilliam S, Sclep G, Bryc K, Choi J, Gao H, Grefenstette JJ, Murdoch B, Stella A, Villa-Angulo R, Wright M, Aerts J, Jann O, Negrini R, Goddard ME, Hayes BJ, Bradley DG, Barbosa da Silva M, Lau LP, Liu GE, Lynn DJ, Panzitta F, Dodds KG. Genome-wide survey of SNP variation uncovers the genetic structure of cattle breeds. Science. 2009 Apr 24;324(5926):528-32. PubMed PMID: 19390050; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2735092.
Matukumalli LK, Grefenstette JJ, Hyten DL, Choi IY, Cregan PB, Van Tassell CP. SNP-PHAGE--High throughput SNP discovery pipeline. BMC Bioinformatics. 2006 Oct 23;7:468. PubMed PMID: 17059604; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC1626092.
Grefenstette J, Kim S, and Kauffman S. An analysis of the class of gene regulatory functions implied by a biochemical model. Biosystems 2006 May;84(2):81-90. Epub 2005 Dec 27.PMID: 16384633.
Matukumalli LK, Grefenstette JJ, Hyten DL, Choi IY, Cregan PB, Van Tassell CP. Application of machine learning in SNP discovery. BMC Bioinformatics. 2006 Jan 6;7:4. PubMed PMID: 16398931; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC1955739
Doung D,
Grefenstette J. SISTER: a Symbolic Interactionist Simulation of Trade and Emergent Roles.
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 2005; 8(1).
Contact Information
702A Parran Hall
130 DeSoto Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15261
Telephone: 412-648-9920
Email: gref@pitt.edu
Web: www.phdl.pitt.edu
Last reviewed: June 7, 2012
