Computational Conservation Biology in R

Solving big problems in conservation biology requires using and understanding what we call “big data.” Millions of data points are created every day from satellites, sensors, airplanes, drones, and weather stations. Our ability to answer questions about the natural world has increased exponentially, but our ability to make sense of all of these data can be limited by our computational skills and tools. This program will introduce students to topics in conservation biology, current research methods involving big data and computation, the theories and applications of statistical methods and software engineering, all in the coding language, R.

Students will then apply what they have learned in all of these different areas to an extensive, interdisciplinary project where computer science students and ecology students will collaborate to answer computational conservation biology questions using R.