About Me

I am a Data Science Lecturer at the Data Science Campus, Office for National Statistics and an Affiliate Researcher at the University of Glasgow. I am a disease ecologist and marine biologist by training with a keen interest in programming, data science, and the use of novel data sources in research.

Interests

  • Spatial Statistics
  • Disease Ecology
  • Marine Biology
  • Open Science

Education

  • PhD in Biology, 2019

    University of Glasgow

  • MSc in Marine Biology, 2014

    Dalhousie University

  • BSc in Marine Biology, 1st Class, 2011

    University of St. Andrews

Where I work

Website under construction.

Skills

R

Statistics

python

Python

Experience

 
 
 
 
 

Data Science Lecturer

Data Science Campus, Office for National Statistics

Sep 2019 – Present United Kingdom
I am a data science lecturer at the Office for National Statistics. I am based at the Data Science Hub Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). My role is split between teaching data science and programming to international and national civil servants, working on data science projects related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and mentoring data scientists and statistics advisors within the FCDO and in other countries.
 
 
 
 
 

Medical Research Council Transition Fellow

University of Glasgow

Aug 2018 – Sep 2019 Scotland
Rabies is a deadly and terrifying disease that exacts a heavy toll on human lives and national economies. For my fellowship I developed a non-separable space-time log-Gaussian Cox model in R-INLA to model the realistic space-time evolution of fox rabies spread. As part of my fellowship I spent 5 months at the Universidade Federal do Paraná in Brazil working with Dr. Elias Krainski.
 
 
 
 
 

PhD Candidate, Biology

University of Glasgow

Jan 2015 – Jun 2018 Scotland
My PhD focused on robust vaccination designs for disease elimination. Specifically, I evaluated how oral vaccination strategies can be optimized to eliminate fox rabies using Bayesian spatial modelling techniques.
 
 
 
 
 

MSc Candidate, Marine Biology

Dalhousie University

Sep 2012 – Sep 2014 Scotland
I analyzed GPS tracking and acoustic data from instruments deployed on grey seals off the Scotian Shelf. I quantified the detection efficiency of acoustic receivers and analysed grey seal movement from GPS tracks to quantify sampling effort.

Recent Posts

Last updated on Nov 21, 2020 5 min read R

Creating the where I work leaflet map

In this post I’ll describe how I created my “Where I work” map using leaflet and how to include it in the hugo academic theme as an iframe.
Last updated on Nov 2, 2020 1 min read
Creating a leaflet map

Creating a leaflet map

Coming soon. In this post I’ll describe how I created my “Where I work” map using leaflet and how to include it in the hugo academic theme as an iframe.
See all posts

Projects

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All Bayesian Modelling Statistics Epidemiology Marine Biology Fisheries

Grey Seals on the Scotian Shelf

My masters work with the Ocean Tracking Network focused on grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) as bioprobes.

R building blocks for mapping data in Africa

Afrimapr is a project funded through the Wellcome Open Research Fund that is creating R building blocks and learning resources to make it easier to make data-driven maps in Africa.

Fisheries

True to my Maine roots, my scientific career started with fish looking at catch intention in the Chilean industrial longline fishery and the reproductive ecology of the female pink cusk-eel, Congrio Dorado!

Outfoxing Rabies

Rabies is a deadly viral infection that kills over 50,000 people each year. Mass vaccination can greatly reduce the burden of vaccine-preventable diseases such as rabies, however, there is relatively little scientific guidance as to how long control programmes must operate and how they should be best implemented to achieve elimination.

Featured Publications

Dr. Laurie Baker, Dr. Thomas Müller, Dr. Conrad Freuling, Patrick Wysocki, Ronald Schröder, Prof. Håvard Rue, Dr. Elias Krainski, Prof. Jason Matthiopoulos, Prof. Katie Hampson
May 2018 In STC
Outfoxing Rabies Capturing the spatiotemporal dynamics of fox rabies in Eastern Germany.

Outfoxing Rabies Capturing the spatiotemporal dynamics of fox rabies in Eastern Germany.

Recent Publications

Local rabies transmission and regional spatial coupling in European foxes

Infectious diseases are often transmitted through local interactions. Yet, both surveillance and control measures are implemented …
Dr. Laurie Baker, Prof. Jason Mathiopoulos, Dr. Thomas Müller, Dr. Conrad Freuling, Prof. Katie Hampson
PDF Project Slides
Local rabies transmission and regional spatial coupling in European foxes

Optimizing spatial and seasonal deployment of vaccination campaigns to eliminate wildlife rabies

Understanding how the spatial deployment of interventions affects elimination time horizons and potential for disease re-emergence has …
Dr. Laurie Baker, Prof. Jason Mathiopoulos, Dr. Thomas Müller, Dr. Conrad Freuling, Prof. Katie Hampson
PDF Project Slides
Optimizing spatial and seasonal deployment of vaccination campaigns to eliminate wildlife rabies

Outfoxing Rabies Capturing the spatiotemporal dynamics of fox rabies in Eastern Germany.

Dr. Laurie Baker, Dr. Thomas Müller, Dr. Conrad Freuling, Patrick Wysocki, Ronald Schröder, Prof. Håvard Rue, Dr. Elias Krainski, Prof. Jason Matthiopoulos, Prof. Katie Hampson
Outfoxing Rabies Capturing the spatiotemporal dynamics of fox rabies in Eastern Germany.
See all publications