Heather Mattie

Dr. Heather Mattie is a Lecturer of Biostatistics and co-director of the Health Data Science Master’s program in the Biostatistics department at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She teaches several courses including Introduction to Data Science, Reproducible Data Science, and Data Science II: Deep Learning. Dr. Mattie’s research focuses on the intersection between biostatistics, data science, and network science. Specifically, she has used network science and machine learning to study interactions in communities, as well as the development and application of artificial intelligence in healthcare research. Her research has also involved the notion of algorithmic fairness, in terms of an algorithm compounding inequities working against underrepresented or disadvantaged groups in society. Her work has found links between unhealthy weight control behaviors and the use of mobile dating applications, particularly in racial and ethnic minorities. She has developed methods that predict tie strength in a network, which assists in modeling the spread of disease and information. Additionally, her work has examined the potential for artificial intelligence to improve inference from data for care and population health, as well as the challenges related to bias and scalability in such models. Dr. Mattie earned a BS in mathematics from the University of La Verne, an MS in mathematics from Claremont Graduate University, and both an AM and PhD in biostatistics from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. In 2018, she became a data scientist at Wellframe, a Boston-based digital health company.