On October 29th I will (finally) be leaving for my internship in Melbourne, Australia. I will be there for 5 beautifully warm months and return just in time for Oregon to start warming up. Hurray for a year of summers! I will not only be writing about my adventures but also using this page as a sort of photoblog and foodie blog.
I will be working for about half of my stay with Matt White at the Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, Department of Sustainability & Environment. While I am working with him I will be:
- doing field data collection for species habitat modeling
- learning how to use the various models that have been developed at the institute
- learning about the various ways that the models will be employed in decision making
The rest of my time may be spent with Dr. Jane Elith. My goals in working with her are to learn her methods for species distribution prediction and then to explore ways in which they may be extended to jointly predict multiple species. She has lately been working with boosted regression trees. I am interested in trying to mixing them with topic models for the joint prediction of species.
I should have left a month ago but I had to have a final (it better be) surgery and so had to postpone things a bit. Feeling great now though and the doc assures me that I can leave!
I will miss everyone and I love you all!
