My research focuses on applied marine ecology and environmental management, particularly with coastal fish assemblages. Research interests include fish ecology, environmental monitoring and assessment methodology and individual-based models.
Aquatic ecology, Socio-ecological fisheries systems
Human behavioral ecology, marine ecology, cognitive sciences, decision making under uncertainty
Using modeling and simulation to support the development of resilient infrastructures
B.S. in Fish and Wildlife from Michigan State University in 1996. M.S. in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Maine - Orono in 2001. Employed by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources since 2003, first as a field biologist (2003-2008), then statewide endangered species coordinator (2008-2012), and currently as the statewide (climate) adaptation program lead (2012-present). Also currently a graduate student in the Boone and Crockett Quantitative Wildlife Center at Michigan State University (2015-present). Father, gardener, hiker, and amateur myxomycologist.
Human-wildlife social-ecological systems, resilience and learning in complex adaptive systems, climate change, disturbance ecology, and historical ecology
Positions held today:
• Associate Professor for Geoinformatics and Ecology at the University of Salzburg (since 2017)
• UNIGIS Program Director (since 2020)
• Head of the Research Group “Spatial Simulation” (since 2013)
Major academic milestones:
• Assistant Professor, Department for Geoinformatics, University of Salzburg (2013-2017)
• Associate Faculty in the FWF Doctoral College “GIScience” (2013-2017)
• Director of Studies UNIGIS MSc distance learning programs, University of Salzburg (2012-2020)
• PhD at the University of Innsbruck on ecological modelling (2011)
• Research Assistant Austrian Academy of Sciences, GIScience Institute (2007-2011)
• Magistra in Ecology, Univ. of Innsbruck (2001) and MSc in GIS, Univ. of Edinburgh (2006)
Spatially-explicit simulation modelling of complex, ecological systems: * the added value of spatially-explicit modelling * Hybrid agent-based and system-dynamics modelling in ecology * Agent-based models, Cellular Automata
Aniruddha Belsare is a disease ecologist with a background in veterinary medicine, interspecific transmission, pathogen modeling and conservation research. Aniruddha received his Ph.D. in Wildlife Science (Focus: Disease Ecology) from the University of Missouri in 2013 and subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship there (University of Missouri, May 2014 – June 2017). He then was a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Modeling Complex Interactions at the University of Idaho (June 2017 - March 2019) and later a Research Associate with the Boone and Crockett Quantitative Wildlife Center, Michigan State University (March 2019 - Jan 2021). He is currently a Research Scientist in the Civitello Disease Ecology Lab at Emory University.
My research interests primarily lie at the interface of ecology and epidemiology, and include host-pathogen systems that are of public health or conservation concern. I use ecologic, epidemiologic and model-based investigations to understand how pathogens spread through, persist in, and impact host populations. Animal disease systems that I am currently working on include canine rabies, leptospirosis, chronic wasting disease, big horn sheep pneumonia, raccoon roundworm (Baylisascaris procyonis), chytridiomycosis, and Lyme disease.
Antônio Sousa is a biologist with a background in medical entomology, disease ecology, statistical and computational modeling. Antônio has a Ph.D. (2018) and Master (2014) in Science from the School of Public Health at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Currently, he is a postdoctoral fellow in the same institution.
My research interest lies in the study of the transmission and dispersal dynamics of vector-borne diseases. I have been working on the development of statistical, mathematical and computational models to understand bioecology of mosquitoes and to predict the transmission dynamics of pathogens transmitted by these insects.