□ PERSONAL & RESEARCH PROFILE

At Microsoft Research, as a post-doc with Drew Purves, the majority of my work interfaces between theoretical and applied ecology. I aim to do ‘Joined-Up-Ecology’, where I consider data in a theoretical context, theory in a data context and all the while consider the statistics. Keeping this approach in mind will make the products of my work (paper, tool, idea) user friendly and enable work by others. An important aspect of joining things up is visual communication, which I will continue to explore in all my work. I actively seek opportunities to present and discuss my work, broaden my world view, contribute to the ecological community, develop public interest in science (& scientist’s interest in design) and generally get involved.

The majority of my research at CEES is under the 'Spatial Ecology and Biogeography' and 'Plant Ecology' of the CEES Research Units, the other projects under the 'Tools for Environmental Management and Education'.

□ KEY PROJECTS AND SYNOPSES

(research area after project name,  collaborators at end)

○ Ecological and evolutionary dynamics of range shifting

('Spatial Ecology and Biogeography')

‘Changes in ranges’ induced by climate change may be spatially non uniform and affect differnt population processes in different ways. Ecological and Evolutionary feedbacks during range shifts are studied. (Benton, Travis, Wong, Turner)

○ “Next generation” species distribution modelling

('Spatial Ecology and Biogeography' & 'Plant Ecology')

We are addressing some of the key challenges of ‘niche modelling’. Investigating the theoretical properties of the statistical models provides useful insights into their application. Biotic interactions are our first port of call. (Purves)

○ “(En)tangled Word Bank”

('Tools for Environmental Management and Education')

We bring the “Origin of Species” to life, as the textual code with all its insertions and deletions are brought out of line. The work of Haeckel and Henslow were a great source of inspiration. (Posvaec)

○ “Joined_Up_Ecology” Workshop

('Communication' & 'Outreach')

The workshop challenged students to understand how ecological concepts are utilised in research and transferred between studies. In collaboration with the British Ecological Society, Computational Ecology Special Interest Group. (Murrell, Purves)

□ A BIT MORE ABOUT ME

From Undergraduate through my PhD I have studied at the University of East Anglia, Royal Botanical Gardens - Kew, University of Aberdeen, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, and University of Leeds.

During my PhD supervised by Tim Benton & Justin Travis, I investigated how the structure and dynamics of populations may respond to climate change. My research used simulation models and experimental microcosms to understand the interplay between evolutionary and ecological processes in populations’ responses, aiming to provide "new" concepts appropriate to the "new" circumstances of climate change. I was especially interested in the changes in populations' spatial structure during range shifts and the resultant changes in gene flow and genetic drift. This research tracks is ongoing (see: Ecological and evolutionary dynamics of range shifting).

I have a wide range of further research interests. In particular I am interested in the consequences of network structure, how networks evolve in response to the environment conditions and how this modulates the strength of environmental interactions through determining evolvability. The use of ‘Network’ in these interests may be substituted for ‘variation’ or more generally ‘interactions’ in a variety of systems form single to multi-species (basically I am interested in Ecology)