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
- Penalized HMM of Ant Interactions
- Identifying and characterizing extrapolation in multivariate response data
- 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.
