George G. Vega Yon

George G. Vega Yon, MSci, PhD

Languages spoken: English, Spanish

Academic Information

Departments Primary - Internal Medicine , Adjunct - Population Health Sciences

Divisions: Epidemiology

Lab

George G. Vega Yon is an Assistant Professor of Research at the Division of Epidemiology at the University of Utah. He studies Complex Systems using Statistical Computing. He has over ten years of experience developing scientific software focusing on high-performance computing, data visualization, and social network analysis. His training is in Public Policy (M.A. UAI, 2011), Economics (M.Sc. Caltech, 2015), and Biostatistics (Ph.D. USC, 2020).

Education History

Undergraduate Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez
 BS
Graduate Training Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez
 MA
Graduate Training California Institute of Technology
 MSc
Doctoral Training University of Southern California
 PhD

Selected Publications

Journal Article

  1. de la Haye K, Shin H, Vega Yon GG, Valente TW (2019). Smoking Diffusion through Networks of Diverse, Urban American Adolescents over the High School Period. J Health Soc Behav, 60(3), 362-376.
  2. Valente TW, Pitts S, Wipfli H, Vega Yon GG (2019). Network influences on policy implementation: Evidence from a global health treaty. Soc Sci Med, 222, 188-197.
  3. Valente TW, Vega Yon GG (2020). Diffusion/Contagion Processes on Social Networks. Health Educ Behav, 47(2), 235-248.
  4. Vega Yon GG, Thomas DC, Morrison J, Mi H, Thomas PD, Marjoram P (2021). Bayesian parameter estimation for automatic annotation of gene functions using observational data and phylogenetic trees. PLoS Comput Biol, 17(2), e1007948.
  5. Bell BM, Spruijt-Metz D, Vega Yon GG, Mondol AS, Alam R, Ma M, Emi I, Lach J, Stankovic JA, De la Haye K (2019). Sensing eating mimicry among family members. Transl Behav Med, 9(3), 422-430.
  6. Vega Yon GG, Marjoram (2019). fmcmc: A friendly MCMC framework. Journal of open source software, 4(39), 1427.
  7. Vega Yon GG, Marjoram (2019). slurmR: A lightweight wrapper for HPC with Slurm. Journal of open source software, 4(39), 1493.
  8. Fábrega Lacoa J, Vega Yon G (2013). El impacto del rating televisivo sobre la actividad en Twitter: evidencia para Chile sobre la base del evento TELETÓN 2012. (33), 3-52.
  9. Vega Yon G (2021). Building, Importing, and Exporting GEXF Graph Files with rgexf. Journal of open source software, 6(64), 3456.
  10. Hâncean MG, Perc M, Gheorghi¿¿ A, Vega Yon GG, Mih'il¿ B (2022). The formation of political discussion networks. Royal Society open science, 9(1), 211609.
  11. Vega Yon GG, Marjoram (2019). fmcmc: A friendly MCMC framework. Journal of open source software, 4(39),
  12. Ouellet M,Hashimi S,Vega Yon G (2022). Officer Networks and Firearm Behaviors: Assessing the Social Transmission of Weapon-Use. Journal of quantitative criminology,
  13. Vega Yon GG, Slaughter A, de la Haye (2021). Exponential random graph models for little networks. Social networks, 64, 225-238.
  14. Vega Yon GG,Quistorff (2019). parallel: A command for parallel computing. The Stata journal, 19(3), 667-684.
  15. Tanaka K, Vega Yon G (2023). Imaginary network motifs: Structural patterns of false positives and negatives in social networks. Social networks, 78, 65-80.
  16. Meyer D, Vega Yon G (2023). epiworldR: Fast Agent-Based Epi Models. Journal of open source software, 8(90), 5781.
  17. Panahi S, Kennedy E, Roghani A, Vega Yon GG, VanCott A, Grugger JJ, Lopez MR, Pugh M (2023). Veteran perspectives of epilepsy care: Impact of Veteran satisfaction, knowledge, and proactivity. Epilepsy & behavior, 144, 109218.
  18. Vega Yon G (2023). Power and Multicollinearity in Small Networks: A Discussion of “Tale of Two Datasets: Representativeness and Generalisability of Inference for Samples of Networks” by Krivitsky, Coletti, and Hens. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 118(544),
  19. Bischoff, Vega Yon G (2023). VISUALIZING MOVIE MAGIC: GRAPHING CHARACTER CONNECTIONS IN BELOVED FILMS. The University of Utah's Journal of Undergraduate Research, 24(2),
  20. Vega Yon GG, Pugh MJ, Valente T (2022). Discrete Exponential-Family Models for Multivariate Binary Outcomes. ArXiv,
  21. Sargent M, Matthews LJ, Vega Yon GG, Storholm ED, Ober AJ, Green H (2024). Assessing the dynamics of PrEP adoption in a national-scale physician network. Social networks, 78, 226-237.
  22. Piombo SE, Vega Yon GG, Valente T (2025). The Impact of Social Norms on Diffusion Dynamics: A Simulation of E-Cigarette Use Behavior. Health education & behavior, 10901981251327189.
  23. Duong KNC, Nguyen DT, Kategeaw W, Liang X, Khaing W, Visnovsky LD, Veettil SK, McFarland MM, Nelson RE, Jones BE, Pavia AT, Coates E, Khader K, Love J, Vega Yon GG, Zhang Y, Willson T, Dorsan E, Toth DJA, Jones MM, Samore MH, Chaiyakunapruk (2024). Incorporating social determinants of health into transmission modeling of COVID-19 vaccine in the US: a scoping review. Lancet regional health. Americas, 35, 100806.

Book

  1. Vega Yon G Applied Network Science with R.
  2. Vega Yon G Applied HPC with R.
  3. Vega Yon G Statistical Inference in Network Science.

Other

  1. Valente TW, Pitts S, Wipfli H, Vega Yon G (2020). Corrigendum to "Network influences on policy implementation: Evidence from a global health treaty" [Soc. Sci. Med.] 222 (February 2019) 188-197. Social science & medicine (1982), 258, 112245.