Timothy C. Willard

Hey there! I’m Tim Willard, a software engineer at UNC Chapel Hill’s Department of Epidemiology/ACCIDDA, where I provide technical support to infectious disease modelers. While I work on several projects, my main focus is flepiMoP (the flexible epidemic modeling pipeline), which is developed in Python and R. I’m currently adding features such as support for additional Slurm HPC environments, a guided CLI installer, enhanced usage of GitHub Actions, and various performance and refactoring improvements. In addition to flepiMoP, I also work on an R package for estimating the severity of infectious diseases and a Python package for seasonal flu vaccine uptake, both of which will be released to the public this year.

Before moving into epidemiology, I worked at DC Energy in the DMV area, primarily using PHP, Python, R, and SQL to support investment analysts. In that role, my time was split between providing performance enhancements and new user features for the “risk engine” R package, and creating/maintaining ETL pipelines (written in PHP/Python) to scrape, clean, entity-map, and aggregate externally acquired data into our MySQL data warehouse. Even earlier in my career, I was an undergraduate research assistant focused on computational condensed matter, where I worked with Python and C++ in HPC environments. During that time, I studied electron-hole liquids and carbon nanotubes and even coauthored a publication.

When I’m not coding or crunching data, you’ll likely find me rooting for the Orioles or Hurricanes, enjoying time with my two cats, or experimenting with new recipes in the kitchen. Feel free to reach out if you’d like to connect or learn more!