Professor Paul Blackwell

I am a statistician and modeller, based in the School of Mathematics & Statistics at the University of Sheffield. My background is in mathematics and I have worked on ecological and environmental applications throughout my career. I am particularly interested in Bayesian methodology, in methods of inference for spatio-temporal or other complex models - often requiring computer-intensive simulation-based techniques such as Markov chain Monte Carlo - and in modelling and simulation in ecology generally.  Specific examples include continuous-time modelling of wildlife movement, spatial patterns of biodiversity, inference for individual-based population models, automated counting and uncertainty analysis for annual layers in ice cores, and using ecological models to incorporate prior information in analysis of remote sensing data. I have collaborative links with the Marine Spatial Ecology Lab (Queensland), British Antarctic Survey, the Food & Environment Research Agency as well as the Department of Animal & Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield, and I am on the executive committee of the EPSRC/NERC-funded National Centre for Statistical Ecology.