Jacob Barhak has diverse international background in engineering, computing science, and disease modeling. He was educated at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. From 2003 to 2006 he worked at an NSF Engineering Research Center at the University of Michigan focusing on inspection systems and personalization. From 2006 to 2012 he led the technical development of disease modeling tools for the Michigan Model for diabetes at the University of Michigan. The Reference Model for disease progression was self developed in 2012 and he currently pursues this development effort as an independent researcher. He is the developer of the Micro Simulation Tool (MIST). His work was internationally exposed in multiple venues. His disease modeling work was repeatedly presented in multiple venues, including MODSIM, SummerSim, I/ITSEC, MSM/IMAG meeting. Dr. Barhak is an advocate of non-blind scientific public review processes and active in organization work, including SummerSim and the Population Modeling working group. He is active within the python community and runs the Austin Evening of Python Coding meetup. His activities and publications are summarized in the following web page: http://sites.google.com/site/jacobbarhak/