Eric Decker

Advancing telemedicine for a better medical system in German speaking (DACH) countries by analysing needs and wants from medical experts and laypeople.

I am jointly establishing The Alan Turing Institute’s position on Foundation Models’ regulation in a team of 30 AI and industry experts, forthcoming as a co-author in the Harvard Data Science Review.

Advancing telemedicine for a better medical system in German speaking (DACH) countries by analysing needs and wants from medical experts and laypeople.

I am involved in a 4 part process. I undertook experts interview surveys for over 40 medical experts in the DACH countries. Designed balanced and weighted online surveys of 5,500 people in DACH countries. Collated, cleaned, and analysed data about attituded to telemedicine in R. Drafted final report of mixed methods study in English and German in a team of 4. My main learnings are: (qualitative) data gathering of large-scale medical and technology surveys and expert interviews and their data analysis in R.

Protecting biodiversity via land-use change detection for the Hawaii Land Trust using deep learning convolutional neural networks managing a team of 4.

The Hawaii Land Trust (HILT) wants to monitor its land for land-use land-cover changes through satellite imagery. I lead a team of 4 people training a Siamese CNN and fine-tuning it with daily satellite imagery data from Hawaii to apply it to HILT’s local environment. My main learnings are: implementing in a team computer vision change detection with deep neural networks.

Fellows join a network of Mercatus students, alumni, faculty, and scholars who are conducting and engaging with cutting edge research in contemporary political economy.

Don Lavoie Fellowship is a competitive, renewable, and online fellowship program for advanced undergraduates, recent graduates, and early-stage graduate students. Fellowships are open to students from any discipline who are interested in studying key ideas in political economy and learning how to utilize these ideas in academic and policy research. Throughout the fellowship I developed policy solutions with field-experts and international fellows to current social, political, and economic issues. My main learnings are: developing policy-making solutions to political, economic, and social challenges.

Evolving understanding of high unemployment and low self-employment puzzle in South Africa through an historical lens on spatial mining data under Apartheid South Africa.

I was involved in 3 stage process in working with historical mining data. First, Identified microeconometric instrumental variable strategies for explaining contemporary high unemployment and low self-emplyoment puzzle. Then, I visualised innovatively spatial data and maps using QGIS and R. Finally, I applied econometric spatial inference South African historical spatial mining data utilising GitHub for version control and R for first-stage regressions in 2 least squares regressions. My main learnings are: spatial data analysis in R, visualisation of spatial data using R and QGIS, version control using Github, instrumental variable identification strategy.

In 1964, founder J.R. “Dick” Sargent created a Department with the first few professors and graduate students. He envisioned a department that would use, and train its students to use, the critical mathematical tools needed for analysis of complex economic issues – a legacy that continues to the present day.

During my time at Warwick and a year abroad at the University of Salzburg I learnt most of my key skills that have I have taken through my career such as teamwork and working to tight deadlines. My courses most relevant to my work included amongst others neural networks, machine learning, advanced macroeconometrics, quality of social science data, time-series econometrics, microeconometrics, mathematical statistics, and game theory. I spent my free time establishing and leading the student society Rethink Economics Warwick of Rethinking Economics International on roles such as External Relations Officer and Co-ordinator organising many academic talks and panel discussions.