About

I am a Quantitative Ecologist and Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at Michigan State University. My research, broadly speaking, seeks to understand how and why population- and community-level processes vary across environmental gradients. I am interested in the role that cross-scale interactions between biotic and abiotic factors play in shaping these dynamics and how these contribute to observed patterns of biodiversity. I approach much of this work through the lens of global change and ultimately aim to understand and predict which species are most sensitive to the impacts of these changes. While I am interested in these processes across taxonomic groups, my current work is focused primarily on birds and marine mammals.

Methodologically, my research takes a cross-disciplinary approach, applying statistical and computational tools to integrate large-scale data streams from a variety of sources, including citizen science projects, satellite-based sensors, remote camera networks, and field-based efforts. I use a range of flexible quantitative methods in this work, including hierarchical Bayesian models and machine learning, to address both basic and applied questions in ecology.