Dr. Laurie Baker

Assistant Professor of Computer Science

College of the Atlantic

About Me

I am an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at College of the Atlantic in Maine 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. You can keep up with my data science explorations and science communication in posts. Find out more about my research in projects and my teaching in courses.

Interests

Spatial Statistics
Disease Ecology
Marine Biology
Open Science

Education

RStudio Tidyverse Instructor, 2020

RStudio
PhD in Ecology and Evolution, 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

Skills

R

Statistics

Python

Experience

Assistant Professor of Computer Science

College of the Atlantic

Sep 2022 – Present Maine, USA

I’m excited to join College of the Atlantic in September 2022 as Professor of Computer Science.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Digital and Computational Studies

Bates College

Aug 2021 – Jul 2022 Maine, USA

At Bates I taught courses in Python and R including: DCS 109. Introduction to Computing and Programming (x2), DCS 210. Programming for Data Analysis and Visualization (x2), and a 1-month intensive short-term course DC/MA s34. Community-Engaged Data Science.

Head of Faculty

Data Science Campus, Office for National Statistics

Jan 2021 – Jul 2021 United Kingdom

As Head of Faculty at the Data Science Campus, I lead a team of four lecturers and one programme officer. Our team develops and delivers a range of data science and capacity-building programmes including a two-year training programme for graduate data scientists. We also develop bespoke programmes, working with national and international partners to help them to build their organisation’s data science skills.

Data Science Lecturer

Data Science Campus, Office for National Statistics

Sep 2019 – Jan 2021 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.

Projects

Mapping Ocean Stories - Understanding the Current and Past Uses of Frenchman and Penobscot Bays

Geocoding the past and current uses of Frenchman Bay from historic and current oral histories

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!

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.

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 Courses

Introduction to Programming and Computing

Community-engaged Data Science

Data Science 1

Data Science 2

Navigating Change

Past & Upcoming Talks

Dr. Laurie Baker, Dr. Elias Krainski, Prof. Håvard Rue, Dr. Conrad Freuling, Dr. Thomas Müller, Micaela De La Puente León, Prof. Jason Matthiopoulos, Prof. Katie Hampson

Apr 1, 2019 — Apr 5, 2019 Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (Lima, Peru); Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (Arequipa, Peru)

Rabia en zorros

Slides Follow

Baker LL, Jonsen ID, Mills Flemming JA, Lidgard DC, Bowen WD, Webber DE, Iverson SJ

Dec 1, 2014 — Dec 5, 2014 Cartagena, Colombia

Los retos del uso de transceptores acústicos y de GPS adheridos a mamíferos marinos para detectar interacciones entre animales

Slides Follow

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