The idea of having a workshop for statisticians in epidemics has been in our minds for quite some time. The challenges that arise when analysing epidemic data are complex and have often led us to the borders of the knowledge in Bayesian Inference and Computational Methods.

In the last 4 years, many of the people involved in this workshop had the opportunity to gather frequently for events related to the EPSRC Bayes4HealthLink opens in a new window grant in the UK. Stimulating discussion around open problems have benefitted all the participants and started synergistic collaborations from which initiatives such as this workshop started.

Many researchers in statistical methods for epidemics have served in national and international advisory boards to soundly inform the response to the Covid pandemic. While following tight deadlines to provide real-time results, models have been improved and new computational methods have been developed. Three years after the beginning of the Covid pandemic we hope that this workshop would allow these researchers to share their achievements and discuss with colleagues, as well as with experts in Bayesian Computation. For this reason, this event is a satellite of the conference BayesComp 2023.

When drafting the initial programme, we wanted this workshop to be accessible to novices to the field of statistical modelling of epidemics and, at the same time, we wanted to propose some topics that differ from traditional approaches to epidemic models, so that even people with substantial expertise could learn something new.

Thanks to the positive response from our keynote and invited speakers and an enthusiastic participation by many researchers that submitted proposals for talks and posters we have completed this programme. We very much hope that you will enjoy this workshop, learn from the works presented by the speakers, and find new collaborators to address the many open questions in the field.

We foresee this would be the first of many appointments for our growing community.

Nauttikaa!

The Scientific Board