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Myrela Bauman

Epidemiologist | Data Scientist

About Me 👩🏽‍💻

My purpose is to leverage data in order to drive evidence-based decision making and lead positive change in the public health & healthcare spaces. What I like most about my job is weaving together different tools and programming languages to build data systems that are scalable and robust.

I'm an investigator by nature: I enjoy digging into intricate problems and coming up with data-driven answers to questions. I have a knack for simplifying statistical concepts to a range of audiences and for creating clean yet impactful visualizations.

When I’m not analysing disease patterns in Python or R, you'll find me chilling with Euclid, getting lost in a good book, slaying dragons on the PS5, or planning my next hike.

Projects

Much of my work involves identifiable patient data, which I am not at liberty to share. Showcased below are some of the side-projects I do for fun and to build my skills.

River Thames Tidal Variation: A Machine Learning Analysis

River Thames Tidal Variation: A Machine Learning Analysis 2023

I analyzed historical sea level records for every gauge along River Thames spanning years 1911-1995. Using machine learning, an isolation forest model was applied to identify anomalies in the water levels. Results were plotted using Bokeh.

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Named-entity sentiment analysis of James Joyce's Ulysses

Named-entity sentiment analysis of James Joyce's Ulysses 2023

In this natural language processing project, I scraped James Joyce’s 800-page masterpiece from the web, tokenized the text, mapped the names of 30 characters, and computed sentiment scores for each of these characters.

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COVID-19 - JFK-analysis

COVID-19 vs. John F. Kennedy Airport departure volume 2022

Analysis to determine the relationship between the cumulative COVID-19 case count observed in 2020-2021 in NYC and the departure volume at JFK airport during the same time period. Examined the relationship with a linear regression using the statsmodels Python library.

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COVID-19 Prevalence in NY state

COVID-19 Prevalence in NY state: Interactive Choropleth Maps 2023

Interactive choropleth maps that display daily prevalence of COVID-19 by NY State county, from 2020 to 2023. Used pandas and numpy for data manipulation, and JSON, folium, and branca for mapping.

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Bookscraping

Bookscraping 2023

Webscraping of 3k+ book titles from NPR's 2013-2022 book lists using JSON and Selenium. Webscraping of NYTimes' review blurbs for best books of 2022 using BeautifulSoup.

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Joy Division 'Unknown Pleasures' Plot

Joy Division 'Unknown Pleasures' Plot 2023

Recreating Joy Division's iconic album artwork in Python, using Matplotlib, Pandas, and the pulsar.csv dataset. The original artwork was created using electromagnetic radio waves from pulsar PSR B1919+21, discovered by Jocelyn Bell Burnell in 1967.

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The Evolution of Programming Languages

The Evolution of Programming Languages 2021

In this R Markdown exploratory analysis, I look at the growth and decline of different programming languages over time. Stack Overflow data are used as a proxy to assess the popularity and usage of different languages from 2008 to 2018.

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Python File Reader

Python File Reader 2022

Data management automation tool. PyPDF2 reads unique identifiers from files and the OS library renames the files in-place with each corresponding identifier.

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Selected Publications

Nonmedical Prescription Drug Use Among Adolescents: Global Epidemiological Evidence for Prevention, Assessment, Diagnosis, and Treatment Peer-reviewed

Perlmutter AS, Bauman M, Mantha S, Segura LE, Ghandour L, Martins SS

Current Addiction Reports, Volume 5, Issue 2, pp 120–127 · Feb 22, 2018

This paper reviews the most recent epidemiological evidence on adolescent NMPD use. Particular attention is given to prevention, assessment and diagnosis of disorder, and treatment.

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Unintentional Drug Poisoning (Overdose) Deaths in New York City in 2022 Published report

Tuazon E, Bauman M, Sun T, Weitz A, DeWalt J, Mantha S, Harocopos A.

New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Epi Data Brief (137); September 2023.

In 2022, 3,026 New Yorkers died of a drug overdose, a 12% increase from 2021 and the highest number on record. My colleagues and I prepared and analyzed overdose mortality data to report on citywide demographic and geographic disparities. A combination of factors impact overdose risk, including social and structural conditions that affect overall health. This report supports efforts to prevent overdose deaths and ensure the equitable distribution of resources.

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Unintentional Drug Poisoning (Overdose) Deaths in New York City in 2021 Published report

Askari MS, Bauman M, Ko C, Tuazon E, Mantha S, Harocopos A.

New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Epi Data Brief (133); 2022 · Jan 13, 2023

During 2021, an estimated 108,000 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States with more overdose deaths than any prior year on record. In New York City, the latest data on overdose mortality demonstrate similar trends citywide, with overdose deaths in 2021 surpassing any prior year. My colleagues and I analyzed citywide overdose mortality trends in order to highlight disparities and inform public health responses.

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Unintentional Drug Poisoning (Overdose) Deaths in New York City in 2020 Published report

Nolan ML, Jordan A, Bauman M, Askari M, Harocopos A.

New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Epi Data Brief (129); 2021. · Nov 30, 2021

Nationally, the number of drug overdose deaths more than quadrupled from 2000 to 2019, and opioid overdose was declared a Nationwide Public Health Emergency in 2017. This Epi Data Brief presents 2020 unintentional drug poisoning death data for New York City.

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Work Experience

Epidemiologist - NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (2021 - Present)

I conduct surveillance of adverse health outcomes related to drugs and alcohol using multiple real-time data sources. I am responsible for monitoring and analyzing syndromic and mortality datasets using R, SAS, Python, and Tableau. Key deliverables to which I contribute include data briefs, data standardization using statistical methods, cluster investigations, and trend analysis reports.

Data Specialist - NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (2019 - 2021)

Advisory role funded by the CDC to collaborate with health departments across 12 US states and leverage public health surveillance data. During COVID-19, I participated in the development of a data dashboard aimed at monitoring real-time mental health and substance use service utilization and monitored the impact of COVID-19 on the utilization of 21 opioid treatment programs.

Research Assistant | Teaching Assistant - Columbia University (2016 - 2018)

Co-authored publications, supported departmental research, and taught weekly Financial Management classes to 56 graduate students.

Data Analytics Graduate Intern - United Nations (2016)

Co-created, tested and deployed database to enable business intelligence analytics at the United Nations Headquarters. Conducted data analyses to improve implementation of new enterprise IT system.