I am currently involved in an interdisciplinary research (Sea Bird Ecology Team) between the Biology and Math departments at Andrews University, MI. For my master's thesis, I am working on arriving at a deterministic, continuous-time model for habitat patch occupancy dynamics in glaucous-winged gulls at Protection Island National Wildlife Refuge, Washington. During the summer of 2003, Karl Phillips (a fellow grad student and Sea Bird Ecology Team member) and I observed random asynchronous gull movement across different habitat patches on and around the island and collected hourly census and flow data. The flow rates to and from individual habitat patches can be expressed as functions of environmental variables. Multiple time scale analysis is then used to build step-wise, predictive, deterministic models for occupancy dynamics. Such models that predict distribution and abundance dynamics of organisms are important in better understanding the temporal and spatial organization of the ecological system, and as a result enhance the decision-making process in natural resource management.

General Research Interests:

Due to my broad interests in conservation biology, population and community ecology and mathematical modeling, I am interested in working on mathematical models that attempt to provide PRACTICAL solutions to the fundamental problems in conservation biology. I am interested in models on reserve design, or quantifying the impacts of habitat fragmentation/ degradation/ anthropogenic disturbances on biodiversity or models that attempt to quantify probabilities of extinction of species or predictive models that enable testing the impact of environmental policy implementation or basically just about any model that uses the quantitative approach to better assess and evaluate conservation issues and thereby enable better conservation planning.