I’m a quantitative ecologist at NOAA fisheries based at the Manchester Research Station in Manchester, WA. I synthesize complex ecological and fisheries data sets to improve conservation of marine and anadromous species.

My research is broadly guided by the idea that careful applications of statistical and simulation models can improve our ability to develop conservation and management strategies that are robust to climate change and ecological surprises.

My areas of active research include:

• Impacts of ecosystem change on the spatiotemporal dynamics of fish demographics, e.g., temperature, ocean currents, phytoplankton dynamics
• Nonstationary dynamics of fish populations and climate effects, e.g., time varying productivity, nonstationary climate effects
• Untangling the pathways linking climate processes and fish dynamics
• Ecosystem based management strategies for transboundary species, e.g., Pacific salmon and Pacific hake

As an NRC postdoctoral research fellow, I was part of a diverse team of scientists studying spatiotemporal dynamics of Pacific hake along the west coast of North America. As part of this project, I lead research to develop 6-month ahead forecasts of Pacific hake spatial distribution using seasonal projections of ocean conditions from the J-SCOPE model.

My Ph.D. thesis at Simon Fraser University focused on improving predictions of climate impacts on North American Pacific salmon. In this work, I used a range of quantitative methods (e.g., Bayesian hierarchical models, probabilistic networks, and state-space models) to identify spatially coherent ecosystem drivers of salmon abundance and productivity throughout North America. In my M.Sc. thesis at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, I examined how environmental forcing impacts the spatial and temporal dynamics of coho salmon populations throughout Southeast Alaska.