Kushagra is a fourth-year PhD candidate in Industrial Engineering. His research involves measuring the impact of social networks on public health outcomes, specifically focusing on suicide ideation and opioid overdose deaths in the US.
Research Interest
Social Network Analysis, Statistical Methods, Generative Modelling, Agent-Based Simulation and Causal Inference
Projects
- Changes in online discourse during the U.S. opioid epidemic
- Spatiotemporal analysis of opioid overdose deaths in PA
- Measuring Network Dynamics of Opioid Overdose Deaths in the US University of Pittsburgh, USA
- Proposed a novel method to investigate the statistically significant effect of social influence on opioid overdose deaths
- Utilized Facebook’s social connectedness index (SCI) to construct the metric for social influence implemented two stage-least squares, cluster-robust, two-way fixed effect, network, and spatial autocorrelation linear models
- Demonstrated that one standard deviation increase in social proximity leads to 13 more deaths per 100,000 population in the USMeasuring the Effect of Social Networks on Suicide Ideation in the US University of Pittsburgh, USA
- Showed network cohesiveness is negatively associated with suicide rates in the US counties using negative binomial regression
- Proposed the use of SCI to create a network measure to analyze the dynamics of suicide ideation in US counties
- Created a framework under a staggered difference-in-difference model using exogenous policy shock to estimate the network effect
Publication
Tiwari, K., Rahimian, M.A., Roberts, M.S. et al. Measuring network dynamics of opioid overdose deaths in the United States. Sci Rep 14, 29563 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-80627-4
Products
- Social Proximity using Facebook's Social Connectedness Data- Code
Poster Sessions
- Poster Competition INFORMS Annual Meeting 2022, Indianapolis: Analyzing the effect of social connections on Opioid Overdose Deaths.
Talk Sessions
- Modeling Social Contexts of Opioid Epidemics Using Aggregate Facebook Connectivity Data in a Large-scale Agent-based Model of the U.S. INFORMS Annual Meeting 2022, Indianapolis, 2022.
- Peer Influence and Spread of Opioid Epidemic: A Data Driven Social Network Analysis Approach Using Facebook’s Social Connectedness Index. INFORMS Annual Meeting 2023, Phoenix
- Measuring Network Dynamics of Drug Overdose Deaths in the US. INFORMS Annual Meeting 2024, Seattle, 2024
Education
B.Tech in Production and Industrial Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology.Education
Internship
Internship at Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC
- Role: Associate Specialist
- Project: End-to-End Supply Chain Optimization with Advanced Machine Learning in Air-to-Ocean Logistics
Awards
(2022) Teaching Assistant of the Year
