George G. Vega Yon

George G. Vega Yon, MA, MSci, PhD

Languages spoken: English, Spanish

Academic Information

Departments Adjunct - Population Health Sciences , Primary - Internal Medicine

Divisions: Epidemiology

Academic Office Information

george.vegayon@utah.edu

Lab

George G. Vega Yon is a Research Associate Professor in the Division of Epidemiology at the University of Utah, with adjunct appointments in Population Health Sciences and the Kahlert School of Computing. A methodologist and scientific software engineer, he works at the intersection of statistical computing, network science, and complex systems. His research develops computational methods for problems in epidemiology, public health, and genomics, including agent-based models of infectious disease, statistical models for social networks, and mechanistic approaches to machine learning.



For more than fifteen years, Dr. Vega Yon has developed open-source scientific software focused on high-performance computing, data visualization, and network analysis. He created and led the development of numerous tools for R, C++, and Python, including the epiworld framework for large-scale epidemiological simulation. Across his research, software, teaching, and mentoring, he emphasizes reproducibility, computational efficiency, and making advanced methods accessible to the broader scientific community.



Dr. Vega Yon received his Ph.D. in Biostatistics from the University of Southern California in 2020. He also holds an M.Sc. in Social Sciences with a concentration in Economics from the California Institute of Technology and a master’s degree in Economics and Public Policy from Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile.

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. Milando C.W (2026). A vision for estimation of the instantaneous reproductive number. Epidemics, 54,
  2. 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.
  3. Mohammadi M, Najafzadehkhoei S, Vega Yon GG, Wang (2025). A novel approach for classifying monoamine neurotransmitters by applying machine learning on UV plasmonic-engineered auto fluorescence time decay series (AFTDS). Nanoscale advances, 7(24), 8013-8022.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. Sargent M (2024). Assessing the dynamics of PrEP adoption in a national-scale physician network. Social networks, 78, 226-237.
  7. Tanaka K, Vega Yon G (2023). Imaginary network motifs: Structural patterns of false positives and negatives in social networks. Social networks, 78, 65-80.
  8. Meyer D, Vega Yon G (2023). epiworldR: Fast Agent-Based Epi Models. Journal of open source software, 8(90), 5781.
  9. 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.
  10. 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),
  11. 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 & Hens. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 118(544), 2228-2231.
  12. 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.
  13. Ouellet M,Hashimi S,Vega Yon G (2022). Officer Networks and Firearm Behaviors: Assessing the Social Transmission of Weapon-Use. Journal of quantitative criminology,
  14. Vega Yon GG, Pugh MJ, Valente T (2022). Discrete Exponential-Family Models for Multivariate Binary Outcomes. ArXiv,
  15. Vega Yon GG, Thomas DC, Morrison J, Mi H, Thomas PD, Marjoram (2021). Bayesian parameter estimation for automatic annotation of gene functions using observational data and phylogenetic trees. PLoS computational biology, 17(2), e1007948.
  16. Vega Yon G (2021). Building, Importing, and Exporting GEXF Graph Files with rgexf. Journal of open source software, 6(64), 3456.
  17. Vega Yon GG, Slaughter A, de la Haye (2021). Exponential random graph models for little networks. Social networks, 64, 225-238.
  18. Valente TW, Vega Yon G (2020). Diffusion/Contagion Processes on Social Networks. Health education & behavior, 47(2), 235-248.
  19. de la Haye K, Shin H, Vega Yon GG, Valente T (2019). Smoking Diffusion through Networks of Diverse, Urban American Adolescents over the High School Period. Journal of health and social behavior, 60(3), 362-376.
  20. Valente TW, Pitts S, Wipfli H, Vega Yon G (2019). Network influences on policy implementation: Evidence from a global health treaty. Social science & medicine (1982), 222, 188-197.
  21. Bell BM, Spruijt-Metz D, Vega Yon GG, Mondol AS, Alam R, Ma M, Emi I, Lach J, Stankovic JA, De la Haye (2019). Sensing eating mimicry among family members. Translational behavioral medicine, 9(3), 422-430.
  22. Vega Yon GG, Marjoram (2019). fmcmc: A friendly MCMC framework. Journal of open source software, 4(39), 1427.
  23. Vega Yon GG, Marjoram (2019). slurmR: A lightweight wrapper for HPC with Slurm. Journal of open source software, 4(39), 1493.
  24. Vega Yon GG, Marjoram (2019). fmcmc: A friendly MCMC framework. Journal of open source software, 4(39),
  25. Vega Yon GG,Quistorff (2019). parallel: A command for parallel computing. The Stata journal, 19(3), 667-684.
  26. 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.

Review

  1. Duong K.N.C (2024). Incorporating social determinants of health into transmission modeling of COVID-19 vaccine in the US: a scoping review. Nanoscale advances, 35,

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.