Category Archives: Conferences/Meetings/Workshops

Conferences/Meetings/Workshops

SE@K Thursday research lunch & cake – Autumn 2023

For the first term of the 23/24 academic year, we have an exciting plan for SE@K and guest talks

  • 28th of Sep     Session : Biosciences lecture; Cake : Eleni
  • 5th of Oct        Session : SE@K intro – all; Cake : Diana
  • 12th of Oct      Session : Bats&Moths – Denise; Cake : Daniel
  • 19th of Oct      Session : Creating blog pages; Cake : Bruno
  • 26th of Oct     Session : Marina – Consultancy work; Cake : Ioannis
  • 2nd of Nov     Session : TBC; Cake : Milly
  • 9th of Nov      Session : TBC; Cake : Lena
  • 16th of Nov    Session : TBC; Cake : Lucy
  • 23rd of Nov   Session : TBC; Cake : Denise
  • 30th of Nov   Session : Monty & Jake – Satellite data; Cake : TBC
  • 7th of Dec      Session : Daniel I. and team – Wildmeat & agent-based modelling; Cake : TBC
  • 14th of Dec    Session : Daniel I. and team – Wildmeat & agent-based modelling; Cake : TBC

 

 

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Conferences/Meetings/Workshops, News

The role of statistics in decision-making at the landscape scale

The recordings of the invited session, organised by Eleni as Chair of the Environmental Statistics Section, at the 2021 RSS conference are available on the RSS youtube channel 

Landscapes are continuously changing, either naturally of because of human intervention. It is important to understand these changes, their short- and long-term effects and the associated risks, and to make decisions on the need and way to stop or reverse changes when required. This session demonstrated how statistics are currently used to inform decision-making at the landscape scale, with pollinators, animal populations, air pollution and droughts as case studies and will highlight emerging statistical challenges within landscape decision-making, specifically around assimilating data from both numeric and non-numeric perspectives.

The session, which took place on Wednesday 8 September 2021 14.20-15.40, featured talks by Mark Brewer (BiOSS), Richard Everitt (Warwick), Emma Gardner (Reading) and Carly Stevens c.stevens@lancaster.ac.uk (Lancaster)

 

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Conferences/Meetings/Workshops, News

Movement and migration in ecology workshop

Daniel Bearup, Eduard Campillo-Funollet, Eleni Matechou and Bruno Santos were awarded funding from the University of Kent’s Migration and Movement Research Theme to run a 2 day workshop 5/6 May 2022.

The workshop will be themed around modelling of movement and migration, with the goal of identifying opportunities for collaboration between mathematicians, statisticians, ecologists and demographers, as well as discussing novel approaches within this theme.

The event will be face to face and take place on the University of Kent campus, in Grimond Building (in Lecture Theatre 1), with some virtual talks, to encourage interaction between participants and invited speakers.

The workshop will feature three broad themes, each covering corresponding approaches for modelling migration and movement: 1) Statistical Ecology 2) Mathematical Modelling 3) Demography and Social Sciences.

There is an exciting line up of speakers (see list below) from the UK and abroad.

Registration for the event is now closed. If you would like to attend and did not get a chance to register then you are welcome to attend the talks but please note that hospitality has only been ordered for 30 attendees.

Programme

Thursday 5th – Morning

  • Frans Willekens (virtual) 9.45-10.30 45′ Emeritus professor of Demography at the University of Groningen
  • Dave Roberts 10.30-11.15 45′ Reader in Biodiversity Conservation at the University of Kent – Slides
  • Coffee break 11.15-11.45
  • Eleonora Mussino 11:45-12:30 45′ Docent at the Stockholm University Demography Unit – Slides
  • Discussion/networking 12:30-13.00
  • Lunch 13.00-14.00

Thursday 5th – Afternoon

  • Ruth King (virtual) 14.00-14.45 45′ Thomas Bayes’ Chair of Statistics at the University of Edinburgh – Slides
  • Fay Frost 14:45-15.05 20′ PDRA at the University of Kent – Slides
  • Coffee break 15.05-15.40
  • Alex Diana 15.40-16.00  20′ PDRA at the University of Kent – Slides
  • Sergei  Petrovskii 16.00-16.45 45′ Professor in Applied Mathematics at the University of Leicester – Slides
  • Wrap up/networking 16.45

Friday 6th – Morning

  • Jonathan Potts (virtual) 9.45-10.30 45′ Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at the University of Sheffield – Slides
  • Luca Borger 10.30-11.15 45′ Professor in Ecology and Biodiversity at the University of Swansea
  • Coffee break 11.15-11.45
  • Luca Giuggioli 11:45-12:30 45′ Reader in Complexity Sciences at the University of Bristol
  • Discussion/networking 12:30-13.00
  • Lunch 13.00-14.00

 

If you are driving to campus then you can find information on parking here.

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Conferences/Meetings/Workshops

Eleni gave invited talk during an BI-IBS event

Eleni was invited to present some of her work on modelling bumblebee citizen science data during a meeting organised by the British and Irish Region of the International Biometric Society on Advanced Topics in Spatial Sampling.

Eleni’s talk showcased a new Bayesian model, developed and implemented into a freely-available RShiny app  by research Fabian Ketwaroo and demonstrated it when modelling two species of UK bumblebees.

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Conferences/Meetings/Workshops

RSS meeting on eDNA: Challenges and Opportunities now virtual

The meeting, initially planned for May 2020, will now take place virtually on the 16th of October.

The timetable for the day is

9.30-10  Kerry Walsh, Environment Agency: “Challenges and opportunities: A regulator’s perspective.”

10-10.15 discussion/change over

10.15-10.45  Naomi Ewald, FreshWater Habitats Trust: “Analysis of eDNA data to inform conservation priorities: case studies of long term species monitoring and short term before-after surveys.”

10.45-11 discussion/change over

11-11.30 morning break

11.30-12 Francesco Ficetola, University of Milan:  “Environmental DNA to track long-term changes of mountain ecosystem.”

12-12.15 discussion/change over

12.15-12.45 lunch break

12.45-13.15 Jim Griffin, University College London: “Modelling environmental DNA data; Bayesian variable selection accounting for false positive and false negative errors.”

13.15-13.30 discussion/change over

13.30-14 Doug Yu, University of East Anglia: “Managing wildlife with eDNA data: salmon, leeches, insects, and forests.”

14-14.30 discussion/close

 

Participants can register on the RSS website.

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Conferences/Meetings/Workshops

“eDNA: Challenges and Opportunities”; RSS meeting on the 7th of May 2020

Environmental DNA (eDNA) is an increasingly popular survey tool for monitoring species distribution. eDNA surveys have been used with a wide variety of species in different landscapes and there is growing evidence that they suffer from lower observation error than existing methods relying on direct observation of the target species.

From detecting single species using quantitative polymerase chain reaction  (qPCR), to studying whole communities using metabarcoding, eDNA is showing great promise in helping us understand species distributions and community compositions.

However, we are yet to fully understand the properties of eDNA, and hence are only beginning to appreciate the opportunities that eDNA surveys bring or the challenges that we need to overcome in the field, in the lab or in implementing eDNA surveys into policy.

This meeting brings together researchers who are leading in the development of new statistical methods for analysing eDNA data, in evaluating the use of eDNA surveys with different species and landscapes, or in embedding eDNA techniques into national or international policy.

Speakers and talks

  • 10.15-11  Kerry Walsh, Environment Agency: “Challenges and opportunities: A regulator’s perspective.”
  • 11-11.30 break and refreshments
  • 11.30-12.15  Naomi Ewald, FreshWater Habitats Trust: “Analysis of eDNA data to inform conservation priorities: case studies of long term species monitoring and short term before-after surveys.”
  • 12.15-13 Francesco Ficetola, University of Milan:  “Environmental DNA to track long-term changes of mountain ecosystem.”
  • 13-14 lunch
  • 14-14.45 Jim Griffin, University College London: “Modelling environmental DNA data; Bayesian variable selection accounting for false positive and false negative errors.”
  • 14.45-15.30
  • Doug Yu, University of East Anglia: “Managing wildlife with eDNA data: salmon, leeches, insects, and forests.”
  • 15.30-16.00 Discussion

The meeting, organised by the Environmental Statistics Section and the Emerging Applications Section of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) will take place on the 7th of May 2020 at the RSS headquarters (12 Errol St, London EC1Y 8LX).

Follow this link to register for the event.

If you have any questions email e.matechou@kent.ac.uk.

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