Research Interests

I am a modeller/statistician with a focus on plant and animal health, who joined BioSS in 2019. My work revolves around the modelling of large scale and complex systems with links to climate change, biodiversity and disease control. In particular, I work on simulations of plant biodiversity from small scale patches, such as Scottish peatlands, all the way up to continents, investigating how vegetation and climate interact in the face of unprecedented change. I also have experience and interest in epidemiological simulations and data analysis, including work on COVID-19, canine rabies and trypanosome parasites, among others. I am fortunate to collaborate with various research organisations, including the Boyd Orr Centre for Population and Ecosystem Health, the Natural History Museum London, EPIC, Scottish COVID-19 Response Consortium, and Natural Resources Wales, and to have received funding from the NERC Landscape Decisions Programme and an EPSRC studentship.

Background

I have always had strongly interdisciplinary research interests and I originally studied Biology with Maths at the University of Birmingham. I moved up to Scotland in 2014 to complete an MSc in Quantitative Methods in Biodiversity, Conservation and Epidemiology, before following on with a PhD in Ecology, both at the University of Glasgow. During my PhD I developed an ecological simulation tool for plant biodiversity, which is one focus of future development in my research (which can be found here).