Associate Professor MacKenzie!
We're pleased to announce that Darryl has taken a part-time (0.2 EFT) Associate Professor position in the Mathematics and Statistics Department at the University of Otago! Assoc. Prof. in New Zealand is equivalent to a full Professor in the US system, so it really is quite an honour to start at this level for someone that hasn't worked in a university since they were a research assistant 18 years ago! This is great recognition of Darryl's previous and continuing contribution to ecological statistics.
This doesn't mean that Darryl will be cutting back on the work he does with Proteus; he sees this as a chance to increase his own range of skills by interacting with other statisticians that regularly work outside of ecology. This exchanging of ideas will lead to new opportunities for people that seek help from Proteus!
Darryl is looking forward to the new challenge, and also the chance to finally write up a few of the research papers he's had on the back-burner for too long!
What have we been working on?
The main project Darryl and Penny have been working on recently is related to assessing anthropogenic impacts on species of interest for Fisheries New Zealand (FNZ; part of NZ's Ministry for Primary Industries). In particular, the project involves using simulation studies to evaluate what level of removal from a population can be sustained, and still allow the population of interest to achieve defined management outcomes. The approach will be evaluated for a range of species with different life-history strategies, and is not expected to be completed until later in the year. We can pass on the results once they're made public.
One of the outputs of the project will be a web-based application to implement the simulation-based approach, which is giving Darryl an excuse to learn more about developing Shiny apps. Shiny Apps provide a web-interface to conduct R-based analyses or code execution, which can be deployed via the internet so can be a great way to let people use R-based tools and utilities, without knowing how to use R. It's always a nice mix when working on a project that allows you to develop new skills that could be useful for other projects!
Contact us if you have any questions or a project you need some help with.