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I am a former postdoctoral researcher studying avian migratory dynamics at the University of Amsterdam in the Department of Computational Geo-Ecology within the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics

I received a Master of Science degree in Physical Geography from Louisiana State University with a focus on weather and climate. My Master's thesis on the subject of spatial and temporal variation of solar radiation in Louisiana (available here) was completed under the direction of Dr. Robert Rohli in 2007.

I have developed predictive models of bird migration intensity and altitude distribution for the Air Forces of the Netherlands and Belgium. These models are at the core of an automated web-based system to forecast the risk of bird strikes to military aircraft.

To facilitate my work, I have developed the RNCEP package of functions in the open-source R language for statistical computing and graphics. These functions retrieve atmospheric data, via the Internet, from two high-quality gridded data sets with global coverage. Data may be obtained over a specified spatiotemporal extent or interpolated to a point in space and time. The package also contains functions for temporal aggregation and visualization of these data. I have recently added functions to RNCEP to simulate flight trajectories anywhere on earth using real wind data from these data sets.

For research and model development, we at the University of Amsterdam have developed the portable Virtual Lab for Bird Migration Modeling. This system encompasses a high performance computing environment coupled with high-speed access to a database of relevant variables for exploring bird migration on both the individual and population levels.