Through online portals such as Observation.org and iNaturalist, naturalists and citizen scientists record millions of observations of plants and animals. These data are not collected according to a fixed protocol: where, when and how intensively people search varies widely, and not every species that is present is also seen.
In this project you will develop Bayesian hierarchical models that account for this, such as site-occupancy models with imperfect detection and spatio-temporal models, and use them to answer ecological questions. Examples are:
- how have butterfly communities in Flanders changed over the past 125 years;
- how are the ranges of insects in Europe shifting under climate change;
- at which spatial and temporal scale does land use affect where species occur;
- how can the restoration of Natura 2000 sites be monitored with existing observations?
As a PhD student, you will conduct research in the field of biostatistics, more specifically ecological statistics. Which parts make up your PhD will be decided together. You will build the models in Stan and R and test them with simulation studies. You will publish your results in scientific journals, present your work at national and international conferences and build an (inter)national network.
Finally, you will contribute to a limited extent to the teaching tasks of the Mathematics-Statistics department (for example, supervising exercise sessions, preparing and grading exams, and supervising students with their master’s thesis).
The position is funded by a research project. We expect you to apply for personal PhD funding (e.g. an FWO fellowship), with full support from the supervisory team.
The research will be performed in the research group Center for Statistics (CenStat) within the Data Science Institute (DSI) at Hasselt University.
Your supervisor will be Prof. dr. Thomas Neyens and your co-supervior dr. Maxime Fajgenblat.
As a PhD student, you will work with ecologists and with partners such as Natuurpunt Studie, the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO) and other stakeholders like Dragonfly Conservation Europe.
The Data Science Institute (established in 2019) brings together more than 150 researchers working in the broad field of data science, spread across faculties and research groups at Hasselt University. DSI's primary objective is to facilitate a data-driven future. We are committed to addressing data-related challenges, fundamental innovations, and applicable solutions. For more information, please visit:
https://www.uhasselt.be/dsi
