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I am a graduate student in the Statistics Department at Penn State University. While my background is in Biology and Wildlife Science, I am very excited at this shift of field and the collaborative opportunities at Penn State. I am interested in exploring the statistical applications to ecological problems and am undertaking several interdisciplinary projects under my advisor, Ephraim Hanks.

These projects have included developing a penalized hidden Markov model for ant colony interactions and, more recently, developing novel tools for exploring when model predictions are extrapolating in large-scale, multivariate, spatial models. These two projects are collaborative efforts with the David Hughes lab and the Cont-LIMNO research group, respectively.

Currently I am a Big Ten Academic Alliance Smithsonian Fellow at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center in Washington, D.C..

Statistical Applications in Ecology

1. Penalized HMM of Ant Interactions
2. Identifying and characterizing extrapolation in multivariate response data
3. Joining eBird STEM abundance with individual tracking data to delineate populations (current)

In addition to my graduate studies and research, I write and blog about various STEM topics. Together with Rachel Wigginton, I blog on our Sweet Tea, Science blog and Tumblr. I am also an avid climber, cyclist, and beginner birder.