I am Hiroaki Murayama, a medical student at the Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, International University of Health and Welfare in Japan. My academic journey is deeply rooted in the field of infectious disease epidemiology, where I explore the mathematical formulation of infectious disease dynamics and contribute to public health strategies using cutting-edge statistical and computational methodologies.

My research interests primarily lie in quantifying transmission dynamics and control strategies for infectious diseases, with a focus on offering public health implications by constructing theoretical frameworks through various approaches such as stochastic process, network modelling, Bayesian framework, etc. I've been particularly invested in understanding the dynamics of directly transmitted diseases such as COVID-19 and mpox (formerly monkeypox).

In my role as an advisor to the National COVID-19 Cluster Taskforce under the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in Tokyo, I had conducted extensive analyses to assess the risk and impact of the COVID-19 epidemic. Additionally, my research contributions include the development of the estimation method for waning vaccine effectiveness, exploration of healthcare burden on case fatality risk, and analysis of non-linear temperature effects on disease transmission.

Selected Publications:

1. Murayama H, Endo A, Yonekura S. Estimation of waning vaccine effectiveness from population-level surveillance data in multi-variant epidemics. Epidemics, 2023;100726.
2. Murayama H, Pearson CAB, Abbott S, Miura F, Jung S, Fearon E, Funk S, & Endo A. Accumulation of immunity in heavy-tailed sexual contact networks shapes mpox outbreak sizes. The Journal of Infectious Diseases, 2023 Jul 4;jiad254.
3. Endo A, Murayama H, Abbott S, Ratnayake R, Pearson CAB, Edmunds WJ, Fearon E, Funk S. Heavy-tailed sexual contact networks and monkeypox epidemiology in the global outbreak, 2022. Science, 2022 Sep 25;0(0):eadd4507.