Soumik Purkayastha

Contributions to Public Health

• Causality and Association in Complex Data: I develop statistical and AI/ML methods for discovering structure and quantifying association in complex health data. My methodological work spans survey-weighted Bayesian networks, copula-based mutual information, and generative exposure models to study causality beyond classical assumptions.
  • Purkayastha, S. and Song, P. X. K. (2026). Quantification and cross-fitting inference of asymmetric relations under generative exposure mapping models. Statistica Sinica.
  • Purkayastha, S. and Song, P. X. K. (2024). fastMI: A fast and consistent copula-based nonparametric estimator of mutual information. Journal of Multivariate Analysis
• AI for Medical-Device Safety Surveillance: With colleagues at CHERP, I co-develop clinical AI models for medical-device safety surveillance. We combine auditable rule-based classifiers with deep-learning and unsupervised methods to detect known and emerging adverse-event patterns, currently focused on insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors.
• Veteran Health Services Research: I serve as a statistician and co-investigator on Veteran-focused health services research. In collaboration with CHERP investigators, I examine social determinants of health, equity in care, and medication initiation for conditions like alcohol use disorder and heart failure.
  • Anderson, T. S., Purkayastha, S., et al. (2026). Initiation of Medications for Alcohol Use Disorder Among Hospitalized Veterans: A Retrospective Cohort Study. Annals of Internal Medicine.
  • Russell, L. E., Frank, D. A., Purkayastha, S., et al. (2026). Racial, Ethnic, and Sex Differences in Social Risks and Social Needs Concordance Among Veterans. JAMA Network Open.
• Infectious Disease Forecasting: I have contributed to the development of data-driven frameworks for pandemic resilience and infectious disease modeling.
  • Salvatore, M., Purkayastha, S., et al. (2022). Lessons from SARS-CoV-2 in India: A data-driven framework for pandemic resilience. Science Advances.
  • Purkayastha, S., Kundu, R., et al. (2021). Estimating the wave 1 and wave 2 infection fatality rates from SARS-CoV-2 in India. BMC Research Notes.