How can we bring together our scientific ideas and the available data to improve our knowledge of ecology?

I am enthusiastic about making connections between ecological hypotheses, statistical models, and data. In my experience, these three elements pose particular problems in ecological research. Ecological data often needs to be compiled, cleaned and validated carefully before being used. Our hypotheses often benefit from mathematical reformulation. Statistical tools often need to be adapted to handle the details of ecological data and models. I am passionate about each of these steps and I look forward to working with all QCBS members on many interesting challenges.
I am a field ecologist by training, with over 15 years of experience working with ecological data, mathematical models and statistical programming (mainly in R). My background is in Botany (MSc, University of Toronto) and Zoology (PhD, University of British Columbia).

I am available to work with QCBS researchers on projects related to:

  • visualization
  • repeatable workflows
  • version control with git
  • programming with R and Rstudio
  • use of Shiny, an R package for web application development
  • create websites using R markdown / Quarto
  • bayesian models, in particular Stan, brms and Turing.jl

For any request, I can be reached at Andrew.Macdonald@USherbrooke.ca or at (514) 398-8719