I use process-explicit models to reconstruct the past, predict the future, and uncover the dynamics of ecological systems. The type of modeling I do is in many ways the opposite of the “artificial intelligence” of large language models. Instead of a black box, the processes that produce the results are explicit and transparent. Understanding the processes is just as important as producing useful and accurate outputs.
My current work at the Cary Institute is in disease ecology, investigating how disease transmission in wildlife changes in space and time.
Experience
Postdoctoral Scientist
Cary Institute of Ecosystem StudiesI am in the lab of Dr. Barbara Han, using process-explicit models to understand disease dynamics in wildlife.
Education
PhD in Biology
University of Adelaide and University of CopenhagenThesis on the use of process-explicit models to understand species range dynamics on large spatiotemporal scales.MS in Biology
Tufts UniversityThesis on the behavioral ecology and species interactions of the invasive European paper wasp in North America.BA in Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology
Columbia University
Spatially Explicit Population Models of Disease Transmission in Wildlife
5 Aug, 2024
poems is a framework for simulating spatially-explicit, process-explicit populations with pattern-oriented modeling for validation.
28 Sep, 2021
paleopop is an extension to poems, a process-explicit, pattern-oriented framework for modeling population dynamics, adding paleo regions and time scales.
5 Aug, 2021
The colorednoise package simulates colored noise as well as structured and unstructured population models with colored noise.
5 Aug, 2017