Kyoto University School of Public Health

Health and Environmental Sciences (Professional Degree Course / Latter Doctral Course)

Hiroshi Nishiura, M.D., Ph.D., D.T.M.&H.
Professor

HOMEPAGE

Health and Environmental Sciences

Among many disciplines of hygiene, we excel into infectious diseases. The team is a mixture of the variety of people with different backgrounds and also a mixture of different nationalities. Physicians, veterinarians, public health experts and other medical experts are mixed with mathematicians, statisticians, biologists, informaticians, politicians and those from other disciplines. They sometimes use completely different languages, but we enjoy that type of chaotic daily life. Only the common thread is that we work on infectious disease epidemiology, and we welcome anyone brave enough to join us!

Research and Education

Our lab excels into mathematical modeling of infectious diseases, especially statistical analysis of empirically observed data. More specifically, our research subjects are enumerated in the following.

  1. Real time analysis and forecasting of emerging and re-emerging infectious disease epidemics
  2. Statistical estimation of incidence and prevalence. Inference of diagnostic coverage
  3. Epidemiological studies of vaccine preventable diseases
  4. Modeling studies of interface between humans and environment: human-animal interface, zoonosis and environmental exposure
  5. Quantification of the natural history: transmission potential, case fatality risk, incubation period, generation time and their determinants
  6. Development of novel likelihood and new methodologies, especially explicit derivation of likelihood functions from semi-structured epidemiological system

We recently step into the analysis of human demographic data and epidemiology/inference of non-communicable diseases, but we limit ourselves to a small number of projects in this area. Since we handle existing empirical data with policy-relevant questions, our models and mathematical theories behind such models are drastically changed based on available information. Of course, we also work on non-modeling research subjects including outbreak investigations, surveillance and clinical research studies. Our common thread is to understand the existing phenomena in front of us. Whatever the mathematical method would be, we aim to achieve modeling studies that can answer pressing scientific or policy-relevant questions. We open ourselves for any criticisms, comments or collaborations on associated infectious disease studies.

Recent Publications

  1. Anzai A, Kawatsu L, Uchimura K, Nishiura H. Reconstructing the population dynamics of foreign residents in Japan to estimate the prevalence of infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Journal of Theoretical Biology 2020;489:110160. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2020.110160.
  2. Echigoya Y, Yamaguchi T, Imamura A, Nishiura H. Estimating the syphilis incidence and diagnosis rate in Japan: a mathematical modelling study. Sexually Transmitted Infections 2020:sextrans-2019-054421. doi: 10.1136/sextrans-2019-054421.
  3. Chan YH, Nishiura H. Estimating the protective effect of case isolation with transmission tree reconstruction during the Ebola outbreak in Nigeria, 2014. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 2020;17:20200498. doi: 10.1098/rsif.2020.0498.
  4. Nishiura H, Linton NM, Akhmetzhanov AR. Serial interval of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infections. International Journal of Infectious Diseases 2020;93:284-286. doi: 10.1016/j.ijid.2020.02.060.
  5. Linton NM, Kobayashi T, Yang Y, Hayashi K, Akhmetzhanov AR, Jung SM, Yuan B, Kinoshita R, Nishiura H. Incubation Period and Other Epidemiological Characteristics of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Infections with Right Truncation: A Statistical Analysis of Publicly Available Case Data. Journal of Clinical Medicine 2020;9:538. doi: 10.3390/jcm9020538.

Health and Environmental Sciences

Professor: Hiroshi Nishiura, M.D., Ph.D.
Associate Professor: Kouji Harada, Ph.D., MPH
Assistant Professor: Taishi Kayano, D.V.M., MSc
Assistant Professor: Tetsuro Kobayashi, M.D., MPH
Assistant Professor: Ayako Suzuki, M.D., MPH
Assistant Professor: Katsuma Hayashi, M.D.
TEL: +81-75-753-4456
FAX: +81-75-753-4458
e-mail: contact@hyg.med.kyoto-u.ac.jp
URL: https://hygiene.med.kyoto-u.ac.jp/