Pedro Nascimento de Lima, PhD

Engineer at RAND Corporation and Professor at Pardee RAND Gradutate School

Talks & Presentations

Below you'll find a subset of talks and presentations I've given at conferences, workshops, and seminars. Many include links to slides or recordings where available.

2024

Demonstrating Robustness in Health Policy Choices

DMDU in Health Symposium | Virtual

Presentation on applying Robust Decision Making methods to health policy questions, covering colorectal cancer screening and pandemic response strategies.

The Value of Environmental Surveillance for Pandemic Response

MIDAS Webinar | Virtual

This presentation explores the economic value of environmental surveillance systems (ESS) in pandemic response using COVID-19 as a case study. It demonstrates how ESS can provide early warning, help mitigate slow policy decisions, and deliver meaningful benefits even if pandemics are rare events.

Characteristics of a cost-effective blood test for colorectal cancer screening

Digestive Disease Week (DDW) | Washington, D.C.

Research presentation on the conditions under which blood-based tests for colorectal cancer screening would be cost-effective compared to traditional screening methods.

2023

Robustness of colorectal cancer screening: A Stress test of US colonoscopy screening guidelines

INFORMS Annual Meeting | Phoenix, AZ

This presentation demonstrates how colorectal cancer screening strategies are robust to a wide range of uncertainties, including different model specifications and colonoscopy sensitivity assumptions. The study uses Bayesian inference to quantify uncertainty around adenoma birth-cohort effects and evaluate the robustness of screening recommendations.

Deep Uncertainty 101 For Infectious Disease Modelers: What it is, why you should care, and what we can do about it

MIDAS Webinar | Virtual

An introduction to deep uncertainty concepts for infectious disease modeling, covering fundamentals of Robust Decision Making (RDM) methodology, its application to pandemic response planning, and how infectious disease modelers can incorporate these approaches to better inform policy decisions under conditions of deep uncertainty.

2021

Reopening California: Seeking Robust, Non-Dominated COVID-19 Exit Strategies

MIDAS/CDC call | Virtual

Presentation on using Robust Decision Making (RDM) approach to evaluate COVID-19 reopening strategies in California under deep uncertainty. The research stress-tests various policy approaches across different futures, comparing constant-caution, time-based, and vaccination-based strategies to find non-dominated solutions.