People
Jody Reimer
Assistant Professor
Department of Mathematics & School of Biological Sciences
Jody is interested in all things mathematical and quantitative ecology, from data-driven questions about specific systems to more general problems in ecological theory. She tends to gravitate towards modeling life in extreme environments such as the polar regions and Great Salt Lake, Utah. When she's not modeling the natural world, she loves running, skiing, biking, and paddling through its less explored corners.
Graduate Students
Abby Hardin-Kohli
Abby is a 4th-year PhD student in the Mathematics Department, working in ecological modeling. She's specifically interested in rate-induced tipping, ecological management, and forecasting. When she's not doing math, you'll often find her playing board games, hitting the climbing gym, or cuddling her cat.
Anthony Jajeh
Anthony is a 5th-year Mathematics Ph.D. student at the University of Utah. He is interested in studying the process of EPS production in sea ice through data analytics, fluid dynamics, PDEs, and ODEs. In his free time, he likes to hang out with friends and go to jiu-jitsu.
Erin Szalda-Petree
Erin is a 1st year PhD student in mathematics interested in movement ecology. She is working on using animal movement data to infer landscape features through mathematical models. In her spare time, she enjoys playing guitar, doing yoga, and hiking.
Ian Whatley
Ian is a 1st-year master's student in applied math studying arctic caribou populations. He is interested in modelling these populations stochastically and using stochastic dynamic programming to optimize their harvest for species longevity. In his free time, he likes learning languages, mountain biking, running, and playing bar trivia.
Lauren Whelton
Lauren is a 3rd-year Biology Ph.D. Student, working on modeling microbial community dynamics of the microbialites of Great Salt Lake. To better understand how this key piece of the benthic food chain will respond to lake desiccation, Lauren is synthesizing field work and modeling techniques to construct the first known microbial interaction network for the microbialites. She is also interested in understanding the process of microbialite recovery following a desiccation event. In her free time, you will find her crocheting or watching trashy reality TV, all while cuddling her cats!
Undergraduate Alumni
- Lucy Leary - math honors thesis & Wilkes Scholar - The world in color: Effects of power law noise on ecological long transients
- Chance Moran - math honors thesis & Wilkes Scholar - A Bayesian approach to forecasting Great Salt Lake primary productivity integrating remote sensing and field data
- Jessie Kalinowski - math undergraduate researcher - Individual based models of polar bear movement
- Rylie Gagne - Wilkes Scholar (data science) - Optimal polar bear movement across remotely sensed sea ice
- Kaitlyn Landers - biology honors thesis - Environmental influences on phalarope and eared grebe counts and distributions at Great Salt Lake, Utah
- Kathy (Zhiyao) Lin - Wilkes Scholar (math)- Sea ice community dynamics
- Nathan Gregor - biology undergraduate researcher - Eared Grebes of Great Salt Lake
- Nicole Forrester - ACCESS student - Optimal polar bear movement across patchy sea ice
- Kitty Saravanan - ACCESS student - Modeling the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
- Grant Poulsen - math honors thesis - First passage times of long transients in ecology [21]
- Linda Zhao - mathbio education project - Integrated STEM - Polar Bear Math and Science (for Polar Bears International).
Jessie, Lucy, and Chance in front of their posters at the U of Utah Undergraduate Research Symposium.