Cheryl is a postdoctoral researcher associated with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center (NOAA), Alaska Regional Office (NOAA), and University of Washington. Her work uses species distribution models to assess groundfish responses to rapid climate change and inform EFH (essential fish habitat) in Alaskan waters. Cheryl earned a PhD in fisheries from University of Alaska Fairbanks, MS in marine science from Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, and BS in biology from San Diego State University. She is most interested in spatially-explicit population and community dynamics and conducting collaborative research that can directly inform resource management.

Lukas is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington in collaboration with the NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center. His postdoctoral research is focused on spatiotemporal modelling of groundfish availability to Eastern Bering Sea bottom trawl surveys. Lukas earned a PhD in Aquatic and Fishery Sciences from the University of Washington in 2020 studying interactions between recruitment dynamics and life history evolution in exploited salmon populations. Other recent projects include the development of spatiotemporal integrated population models for recruitment forecasting, and analysis of in-season genetic data for real-time assessment of mixed stock fisheries. Lukas is broadly interested in the population dynamics and life histories of fishes, and developing quantitative tools for fisheries management.

Maxime is a quantitative ecologist who has a great interest in working at the interface of ecology, statistical modelling, and the development of quantitative tools for resource management. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington in collaboration with National

Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA) at the Alaska Fishery Science Center. Maxime’s current works include:

• Better understanding the spatio-temporal dynamic of snow crab in the Bering sea to produce maps of exploitable biomass, recruitment, fishing mortality, and other quantities used in management. To this goal, Maxime is extending an existing spatio-temporal model initially developed by Jie Cao (UNC) to be tailored to snow crab in the Eastern Bering Sea. PIs and collaborators: Cody Szuwalski (AFSC, NOAA), Andre Punt (SAFS, UW), Jim Thorson (AFSC, NOAA), Jie CAO (UNC) 

• Inferring effects of loss of sea ice on movement phenology of yellowfin and flathead sole in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Island. To this goal, Maxime is developing a spatio-temporal model fitting simultaneously survey and fishery-dependent data. PIs and collaborators: Carey McGilliard (AFSC, NOAA), Jim Thorson (AFSC, NOAA), Lorenzo Ciannelli (COAS, OSU), Jim Ianelli (AFSC, NOAA)

Maxime earned his Ph.D. in Fisheries Ecology from Agrocampus Ouest (Bretagne Loire University, France) in 2019 with Dr. Etienne Rivot. His Ph.D focused on understanding the worldwide decline in the Atlantic salmon populations.

Dan Ovando is a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington. His research explores how ecology, economics, and data science can be used to help communities effectively manage marine resources. His recent projects include using economic data to estimate the state of fisheries, evaluating and estimating the regional costs and benefits of marine protected areas, and using machine learning to predict returns of Alaskan salmon.  Dan received his B.S. in Ecosystem Science and Policy and Biology from the University of Miami, and his Master’s and Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Management from the Bren School at the University of California Santa Barbara. He has worked as a shark biologist, and as a research scientist for the Sustainable Fisheries Group. When not at the computer he can usually be found on a mountain or in the ocean.  

Matt is a postdoctoral scholar through the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO). His current research is statistically evaluating optimal age-sampling strategies for groundfish stocks managed in the Gulf of Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and the eastern Bering Sea. This work will aid in evaluating changes in otolith sampling and ageing efforts across NMFS surveys, as well as inform on stock assessment model uncertainty associated with reducing input sample sizes. Matt earned a PhD in Marine Science from Stony Brook University in 2020, and a MSc in Fisheries Science from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in 2016. In general, his research interests are broad, ranging from topics such as life history, population structure, and migration ecology to stock assessment and management strategy evaluation. His graduate work involved (1) using otoliths and otolith chemistry to investigate age structure and stock mixing, as well as habitat use and partial migration, and (2) exploring the implications of these processes for stock assessment and management strategies through simulation. 

Jie is an assistant professor at North Carolina State University. His research is in the general area of quantitative fisheries ecology with an emphasis on fish population dynamics and ecosystem modeling. He received his PhD in Marine Biology from the University of Maine in 2015, where he developed a seasonal size-structured assessment model for Northern Shrimp in the Gulf of Maine. The model now is being used for management of this stock by Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. During his postdoc with Jim Thorson, Andre Punt and Cody Szuwalski at the University of Washington, he developed a size-structured spatiotemporal population model for invertebrates. He is currently collaborating with Jim to further test and improve this model. 

Jin is a research scientist at Centre for Fisheries and Ecosystems Research at the Memorial University of Newfoundland and a junior Ocean Choice International (OCI) Industrial Research Chair in Fish Stock Assessment and Sustainable Harvest Advice for Northwest Atlantic Fisheries. She is a broadly trained quantitative ecologist who is particularly interested in fishery science. She received bachelor’s degree in Ecology at Shandong University, China and PhD degree in Ecology and Evolution at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. During her postdoctoral research with Jim Thorson and Tim Essington at a joint position of the Northwest Fisheries Science Center and the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences in the University of Washington, she worked on methods to improve abundance estimates by incorporating developments in spatio-temporal modeling and improve forecasting using equation-free nonlinear spatial time series analysis.

Arnaud is an Acting Instructor at the University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. He is mainly interested in ecosystem modeling and spatio-temporal statistical modeling, particularly for informing ecosystem-based fisheries management in the Gulf of Mexico. Past work with Jim included spatio-temporal modeling for producing distribution maps and ecosystem model inputs for the Gulf of Mexico, catch-per-unit effort standardization for informing tuna and billfish assessments in the North Atlantic, and the development of a spatio-temporal modeling framework using multiple data types for supporting stock and habitat assessments. Current work with Jim includes the development of a spatio-temporal modeling approach for simultaneously estimating density and condition in fishes, and spatio-temporal analyses of diet composition data for several marine ecosystems.

Cole is a scientist at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA. His broad professional interests are:

• Fisheries stock assessment methods

• Bayesian statistics

• Marine natural resource management

• Marine population dynamics

He is currently working on a project combining acoustic and bottom-trawl data in a spatio-temporal index standardization model for Eastern Bering Sea pollock in collaboration with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center (NOAA) in Seattle.

He received a PhD in Quantitative Ecology and Resource Management from the University of Washington in 2017, and spent a year in Concepcion, Chile doing a postdoc before returning to Seattle.

Cecilia is a quantitative ecologist and oceanographer who focuses on fish and marine mammal population biology. Currently, she’s working as a post-doc through the JISAO program with Dr.s Jim Thorson, Andre Punt, Stan Kotwicki, and Jerry Hoff at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center NOAA to develop methods to incorporate multiple fisheries data sets that span different points in space and time to improve estimates of abundance for Bering Sea fish stocks. She received her Master’s in Marine Mammal Science from St. Andrews University and her PhD in Marine and Atmospheric Sciences from Stony Brook University. Cecilia has a broad range of ecological interests and has worked in many different ecosystems both as field biologist and a quantitative biologist. Past research covered penguins in Antarctica, desert tortoises in the Mojave Desert, dolphins in the Florida Keys, plant life along the Missouri river, and water quality in the Chesapeake Bay. Her current research broadly explores the role of climate and ocean conditions on marine population dynamics. In particular, are there ways that we can incorporate climate into statistical models to understand how changing ocean conditions are influencing fish population numbers and distribution for use in fisheries management.

Merrill is a quantitative research scientist focusing on ecological modeling to support natural resource management. She is based in Seattle, WA working as a consultant through her company, Scaleability LLC. Merrill’s current research includes: 

1. Spatio-temporal modeling of populations along a stream network using the VAST R package developed by Jim, with application to the long-term exploitation and impact of dams on New Zealand longfin eels and multiple life stages of Oregon salmonids; 

2. Data-limited fisheries stock assessment methods, including support for the Length-based Integrated Mixed Effects (LIME) model, accounting for uncertainty using a stacking algorithm, examining impacts of violated assumptions about selectivity, growth, and data representativeness for various data-limited assessment approaches focused on U.S. West Pacific coral reef fish, and training other scientists in data-limited assessment methods and management options;

3. New Zealand’s annual rock lobster stock assessment, including collaboration on the Bayesian length-based assessment and management procedure evaluation. 

Merrill earned an MS from the University of Florida Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences program in 2013 and a PhD from the University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences in 2017. 

Haikun is a stock assessment scientist at the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, interested in using state-of-the art and developing new statistical methods to improve stock assessments. He received his bachelor’s degree in physical oceanography from Peking University and his Ph.D. degree in quantitative fisheries ecology from Stony Brook University. During his postdoc with Jim Thorson and Rick Methot at the University of Washington, he led the development of a semi-parametric method for autocorrelated age- and time-varying selectivity, which has been implemented in the latest version of Stock Synthesis. He also conducted simulation experiments to compare the performance of widely-used data weighting methods for length-composition data when estimating time-varying selectivity. He is currently collaborating with Jim to improve the standardization of abundance index and length-composition for tuna stock assessments by fitting VAST to fisheries’ catch-per-unit-effort and length-frequency data.