About the lab


Larremore Lab Collaboration Graph.

The Larremore Lab focuses on developing methods of networks, dynamical systems, and statistical inference, to solve problems in biological and social systems. We try to keep a tight loop between data and theory, and learn a lot from confronting models and algorithms with real problems.

In biological systems, we focus on the spread and evolution of infectious disease. Although shifting focus toward COVID-19 testing, seroepidemiology, and vaccination, the lab also focuses on the malaria parasite P. falciparum and its rapid recombination to evade the human immune system. Our goals are broadly to understand the interplay between pathogen evolution and human immunity, and its implications for virulence, population structure, and most critically, countermeasures.

In social systems, we focus on understanding the patterns and processes that define the ecosystem of scientific research and discovery. Our goal is to combine rigorous computation, ecological theory, and social science to understand how the scientific community can be made more equitable and more productive. Here, we continue to build on a decade-old collaboration with the Clauset Lab.

The Larremore Lab is led by Dan Larremore, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder in the Department of Computer Science and the BioFrontiers Institute, with an affiliation with the Department of Applied Mathematics, and with the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The lab is part of CU's Complex Systems Group and many students in the lab are also officers in the Boulder/Denver chapter of the Society of Young Network Scientists.

Lab News

  • 2022 November - New paper! Sam Zhang's work on the role of funded labor in explaining the greater productivitiy of faculty at elite universities is now published in Science Advances.
  • 2022 November - New paper! Nick Laberge's work on the relationship between subfield, prestige, and gender inequality in computing is now published in the CACM, along with a lovely interview video and cover art!
  • 2022 September 28 - Dan gives 2022 NSF Waterman Lecture. Recording and slides available.
  • 2022 September 27 - New paper! Led by Hunter Wapman, "Quantifying hierarchy and dynamics in U.S. faculty hiring and retention" appears in Nature.
  • 2022 September 22 - New paper! "Optimizing prevalence estimates for a novel pathogen by reducing uncertainty in test characteristics" appears in Epidemics.
  • 2022 September 19 - New paper! Led by Erik Johnson, "Bayesian estimation of population size and overlap from random subsamples" appears in PLOS Computational Biology.
  • 2022 September 7-9 - Casey Middleton presents research at the 2022 MIDAS Network Annual Meeting in Bethesda, MD.
  • 2022 July 31 - Postdoc Kate Wootton is off to the University of Canterbury where she'll take a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow!
  • 2022 July 19-22 - Hunter, Katie, and Sam presented their work at the International Conference on Compuational Social Science at the University of Chicago.
  • 2022 June 6-9 - Hunter, Katie, and Sam presented at the first International Conference on the Science of Science and Innovation at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, in Washington D.C. At the same time, Casey presented her work at Ecology & Evolution of Infectious Diseases.
  • 2022 May 19 - Co-led by Kate Bubar and Casey Middleton, new paper in Nature Communications, SARS-CoV-2 Transmission and Impacts of Unvaccinated-Only Screening in Populations of Mixed Vaccination Status.
  • 2022 May 5 - Many in the lab attended A New Synthesis for the Science of Science, organized at the Santa Fe Institute by Aaron Clauset, Dan Larremore, and Mirta Galesic.
  • 2022 May 5 - Dan recieves the Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation.
  • 2022 April 12 - New preprint, Labor advantages drive the greater productivity of faculty at elite universities led by Sam Zhang.
  • 2022 April 11 - Casey Middleton wins the Departmental Outstanding Research Award for her work modeling vaccinate-or-test strategies!
  • 2022 April 11 - Congratulations to Upasana Dutta for a brilliantly defended MS thesis, supervised by Aaron Clauset, and for winning the Bell Foundation Outstanding Research Award! Upasana is off to Penn to work with Duncan Watts this fall.
  • 2022 April 11 - Tzu-Chi Yen is recognized with an Outstanding TA Award!
  • 2022 March 15 - Dan joins the Editorial Board at PLOS Computational Biology as an Associate Editor.
  • 2022 March 1 - Dr. Eun Lee leaves the lab to begin a faculty position at Pukyong National University!
  • 2022 January 1 - New preprint, Subfield prestige and gender inequality in computing led by Nick LaBerge.