This is an informal place for me to list my research projects. It is not meant to be complete, nor up to date. Please see links below for Google Scholar for the most recent updates. Broadly speaking I'm interested in developing and applying quantitative techniques to manage marine resources efficiently and sustainably. Below is a collection of research projects I’ve been involved in, with newer projects at the top.
I am working on a spatiotemporal index standardization that combines information from bottom trawl and acoustic survey data. The method is a spatial factor analysis as implemented in the software VAST, and the end goal is to improve the stock assessment for walleye pollock in the Eastern Bering Sea.
For my PhD I studied the advantages of a Bayesian algorithm called Hamiltonian Monte Carlo for statistical inference in fisheries stock assessment. I added capabilities similar to the statistical modeling software Stan into AD Model Builder so that these new powerful tools were readily available to most existing stock assessments. The overarching goal was to provide a software toolset and guidance such that interested analysts could perform Bayesian inference if desired.
The topic of my Master's degree was the population trends of blue whales off the coast of California. I combined multiple existings data sets to infer the spatial pattern of whaling and then combined that with recent abundance estimates to gauge the risk of lethal ship strikes to the recovery of this population.
Fisheries stock assessment models (used to
management fisheries in the US and around the
world) are complex and often unpredictable. One
approach to help understand their statistical
behavior is to use simulation testing. With this in
mind a group of students and postdocs, based mainly
at the UW, developed a software platform called
ss3sim
(code
and paper)
which facilitates this type of simulation
testing. So far we have used our package in several
studies: