Ecologist, data scientist, and many other things…
I’m interested in ecological dynamics. What mechanisms underlie change in ecosystems over time and space? I study resilience, thresholds, tipping points, and interactions. These are properties of dynamical systems that appear not only in ecological systems but also social, climate, and economic ones (and many more!).
I’m also interested in how climate, ecosystems, and humans interact. What do changing climates and ecosystems mean for humans? What do these changes mean for food and water security? How are we shaped by, and shape, our environment?
Currently, I work with Tony Ives and Jack Williams at UW-Madison. We are developing statistical models to test hypotheses about the drivers ecological change over time. Ecosystems evolve over centuries and millennia, so we delve beyond the observational record and reconstruct ecosystem histories and climate change from traces, such as fossil pollen and chemical isotopes. From these traces we can begin to estimate past interactions among species and drivers of ecological change!
I completed my PhD at the University of Auckland, NZ, with George Perry and Janet Wilmshurst. My thesis focused on a virtual ecological approach to assessing uncertainties in palaeoecological data. This involved simulating ecosystems from population growth models with underlying threshold dynamics, and assessing how sampling and environmental degradation can influence the inferences we make from the data.
Find me on the Ives and Williams labs!
Teaching
Professionally, I have a broad experience in data science and with teaching.
Teaching experience:
- Discovering Environmental Modelling
- Natural and Human Environmental Systems
- Environmental Science and Management
Lectures:
Workshops:
- Quarto for Collaboration
- State-space modelling ESA 2024 (updating as you read this)
Data science
Being interested in empirical and theoretical ecology leads to a lot of data science! For my own work, I use virtual machines, cluster computing and handle large volumes of data. My experience working for the Centre for eResearch, also included consulting on researchers’ needs, secure data storage, and setting up analysis workflows.
Fieldwork
I love being out in the field and help out wherever I can on fieldwork. I’ve been out sampling heavy metals in streams, freshwater invertebrates, invasive fish, lake chemistry, aphids, flowering plants, and setting recorders and camera traps (and more)… Here are some pics:
Other interests
In my spare time I have no shortage of hobbies: classical piano, art, rock climbing, and baking.
