We are working with great people with a strong motivation to teach and learn. Here you can read more about the Coding Club team and our collaborators.
Gergana Daskalova
I am a global change ecologist with a passion for biodiversity change, agro-ecology and quantitative syntheses. The overarching aim of my research is to determine what are the sources of the complex patterns of population and biodiversity change observed over time around the world. From forest cover change around the world to climate warming in the Arctic and more, I am investigating how and why Earth’s biota is changing across the Anthropocene. In the last five years, Coding Club has brought me so much joy and I have loved creating tutorials, running workshops and seeing our team grow. For more, check out my personal website and Twitter account @gndaskalova. I am part of the NERC E3 Doctoral Training Programme at the University of Edinburgh and I'm also a Carnegie scholar, now in my final year!
Elise Gallois
I’m a 3rd Year E4 DTP PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, studying the effects of microclimate on various aspects Arctic tundra ecology. For this project I’m busy analyzing time series data, spatial data, as well as analyzing data from multiple different sources. Throughout this process I’ve found that Coding Club tutorials have given me the skillset and confident to tackle these challenges, and I really love being able to pass on these skills to others as a tutor. My favourite thing about Coding Club is watching people with no experience in coding build up their confidence and ability to solve their own unique coding and statistical challenges. You can find me here: https://www.elisegallois.com/, and on Twitter at @e_gallois.
Joe Everest
Hi! I am a second year PhD student with a research focus on macroecological change and remote sensing. My PhD aims to tackle novel aspects of tundra biodiversity change and change the way we look at biodiversity throughout the world’s coldest environments. I’m relatively new to the coding arena but having learnt with Coding Club throughout 2020, I’ve become an instant fan and recognise just how much R and coding can offer my research and wider endeavours. I still have much to learn and as a tutor and Coding Club coordinator, I’m delighted to share in this coding journey with the Coding Club family! For more information, check out Team Shrub and the NERC E4 DTP at the University of Edinburgh, or my website and twitter account. Happy coding!
Maude Grenier
I’m a 2nd Year Sainsbury PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, studying changes in the timing of life events in Arctic plants. To investigate these changes, I will use different data sources to build time series and Bayesian models. Coding Club tutorials have introduced me to coding as an undergraduate and have given me the skillset and confidence to tackle this project. I love being able to help people with little coding experience build up their confidence and skills to tackle their own data more effectively.
Diana Jerome
I am a first year PhD student studying how shrubs across the tundra- forest ecotone respond to climate change. When I started learning to code I thought of it as a means to an end to analyze my data, but now coding is one of my favorite parts of my research! I am excited to be a part of coding club and help others on their journey to being comfortable coding. You can find out more about me and my research on my website and on twitter.
Calum Hoad
I’m a second year SENSE CDT PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, using satellite imagery to research the influence of snow and permafrost on vegetation change in the Arctic. I began my coding journey while working in industry as a GIS Technician, learning Python in an attempt to automate some very tedious and time consuming workflows. After some initial frustration and angst I discovered how satisfying and near-magical coding can be when all the pieces fall into place and the intended outcome pops up on screen! Since beginning my PhD I’ve delved into the world of R through Coding Club’s excellent tutorials and I now enjoy helping others overcome their coding anxieties as a Coding Club tutor.
Erica Zaja
My name is Erica and I am an undergraduate Ecology and Environmental Sciences with Management student at Edinburgh University. I am really excited to be a new Coding Club tutor this semester! I started studying coding with the online Data Science for Ecologists and Environmental scientists course, which kept me company for a few months of isolation! Despite only recently discovering the wonders of R, I have been challenging my R-skills ever since. Applying an understanding of statistics and object-oriented programming to my courses has made my life so much easier! I love getting my hands dirty in the fields (my main interest being agro-ecology), but thanks to R I have discovered a real passion for Data Science. The skillset Coding Club has given me has made the creation of my very own tutorial possible! I am excited for future opportunities and I’d love to spread this excitement to my peers.
Guillemette Gandon
Hello coding peers! I am a fourth-year Ecological and Environmental Sciences student at Edinburgh University. Studying plants and animals around the world is very close to my heart, with a particular interest in biodiversity conservation and the impact of environmental management on local communities. Since taking the Data Science course in 2020 I seem to have developed a strange addiction to coding, while developing the most useful skills ever for my ecological projects. I am now very looking forward helping newbies at the Coding club workshops!
Boyan Karabaliev
Hi everyone! I'm a an Ecological and Environmental Sciences graduate from the University of Edinburgh! A long term attendee and fan of coding club, I finally joined the team in 2021, helping out with workshops, content, and maintaining the website. I first started using R in 2018, and it has been immensely helpful in all kinds of projects in (and sometimes out of!) uni. I am happy to share my experience with R and Data Science and to show everyone that coding is not difficult! Interested in all things ecology, conservation, and data analysis.
Alessandra Cianfanelli
Hello everyone! I am Alessandra, I graduated this year with a BSc in Ecological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Edinburgh and I’ve just started an MSc in Remote Sensing and Environmental Mapping at UCL. When I first started uni I thought coding was really not my thing but then I came to coding club and took the Data Science course and fell in love with it!
My favourite thing about R is how much freedom it gives me to explore and work with my data and the creativity that it allows me to have through data visualization. I am so excited to be part of the CC team and to help other people discover the beauties of data science!
Kai Westwell
I am a recent Ecological and Environmental Sciences graduate from the University of Edinburgh. I love most aspects of ecology, but mostly focus on conservation and microbial ecology. I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on marine viral ecology, and couldn’t have made it through without Coding Club! I have found Coding Club to create a great atmosphere for encouraging learning in data science, and I am excited to continue tutoring with the club.
Lucie Pestiaux
I am a Ecological and Environmental science with Management graduate from the University of Edinburgh. My interests are in community ecology and more specifically the study of symbiotic relationships in the natural world. I am also interested in urban ecology. I strongly believe that data science can help us seeing the broader picture and understand better the complexity of our systems of interest. Coding Club has pushed me into a field I never thought I would be getting in. But here we are… Intrigued and excited by this discovery I am keen on helping others getting hooked!
Colombe Stevens
I am an undergraduate Ecology & Environmental Sciences student at the University of Edinburgh. My interests are quite varied: agri-food systems, anything to do with subarctic and polar ecosystems and relating ecology to the human world and its sustainability challenges. I first started out on R by going to a few Coding Club sessions in 2019 and then fully bit the bullet by taking the Data Science in Ecology and Environmental Sciences course in my 3rd year. Although I never envisioned myself coding, I have now become a convert and actually find it to be quite a soothing and therapeutic kind of work (past me would have never guessed this)! I look forward to exploring more of the coding world and am excited to be a Coding Club tutor and to share with this community!
Jiri Subrt
I am a 4th year undergraduate student of Ecological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. My interests in my field are wide, from animal behaviour, using remote sensing to answer some environmental questions, climate change, marine biology.... You would usually find me checking weather channels because I am obsessed with weather! My data science journey started with using some basic R in 2019, but really started with a Data Science course in my 3rd year. I found coding and statistics very complicated at the beginning, and as a complete math amateur I never thought coding was actually so intuitive and could be so much fun and could make your life easier! Apart from my studies, I am a yoga teacher, a passionate diver and foreign languages enthusiast.
Emma Gemal
I am an Ecological and Environmental Sciences graduate, interested in polar ecology and conservation. I became introduced to the world of coding and data science through Coding Club in 2019 and (despite initially believing I wouldn’t like it) I have been hooked ever since. I have since used R for a range of projects throughout my University career, including my undergraduate dissertation, and hope to continue expanding my knowledge within ecological data science going forward. Coding Club has been a fantastic, inspiring environment for me, and I am excited to be a part of the team!
Jakub Wieczorkowski
I am a Geography graduate from the University of Edinburgh and my interests lie in conservation, ecology and environmental change. My undergraduate dissertation involved lots of modelling of plant diversity data, with R being my best friend in this long journey. I completed Data Science in Ecology and Environmental Science course in 2020 and I am excited to now be part of the Coding Club!
Sandra Angers-Blondin
I have recently completed my PhD at the University of Edinburgh, studying the growth responses of tundra plants to climate change. I love to share my passion for nature and science, be it through outreach, photography, social media, or teaching. I’ve been a tutor for the Coding Club for over two years, and I love that I get to learn new things every week by helping other participants solve their coding challenges! I am now working on developing our brand new online course set to launch in 2020 (stay tuned…).
Dr Isla Myers-Smith
Dr Isla Myers-Smith is a senior lecturer in the Ecological and Environmental Sciences Programme at the University of Edinburgh and winner of the EUSA teaching award for innovative assessment for the course Conservation Science. She works with large-scale ecological data to understand global change in tundra ecosystems and biodiversity change across the globe. She is particularly interested in how to encourage the development of quantitative skills to keep up with the rapid advances in statistics and programming in the field of ecology. Check out TeamShrub's website and blog for updates on their research.
Coding Club Alumni
Time has passed and some of our members have graduated and continued onto further adventures!
Anna Chirumbolo
Ecological and Environmental Sciences. I have developed a strong interest for data science and particularly in its application with remote sensing, for monitoring long-term change in plant diversity. In my current dissertation I assess the spatial consistency between two different data sets (one from satellite data and one from ground-based collections) on functional leaf trait distribution across the world’s biomes. Coding Club has been an incredible experience for me to deepen my knowledge of coding and statistical skills, which I love to share to those who come to the workshops!
Shawn Schneidereit
I am a fourth-year undergrad student, studying Ecological and Environmental Sciences with Management, where I primarily focus on data science, remote sensing, and GIS applications. For my undergraduate dissertation, I am researching the spectral diversity hypothesis and whether remotely sensed spectral data can be used as an indicator of biodiversity in arctic tundra environments. I am an alumnus of the Data Science in Ecological and Environmental Sciences course and began attending Coding Club as a student in 2018. The open and friendly learning environment curated by Coding Club was the seminal event in leading me to gain a passion for data science and the keystone upon which I was able to build further analytical skills. I am grateful to be taken on as a Coding Club tutor and hope to help other students gain the inspiration and fundamentals of coding and data science.
John Godlee
I am a PhD student from the University of Edinburgh where I research the canopy structure of savanna ecosystems and its relationship with biodiversity. I have used R on a range of projects, from analysing employee satisfaction data for a private equity firm to mining linguistic transcripts for speech patterns. Through my own work, I have gained experience in using R for statistical modelling, mapping, and data manipulation. I have experience designing sustainable projects through my work in nature conservation and as the student representative for the University of Edinburgh School of GeoSciences. I’m very interested in the role of open-source and collaborative technology in academia. I am part of the NERC E3 Doctoral Training Programme.
Izzy Rich
I am a fourth year undergraduate student studying Ecological and Environmental Sciences. My main interests involve using data and statistics to understand and help create a more renewable and sustainable energy sector. Currently, I am working on my undergraduate dissertation, which looks at the extent to which socio-economic events can be linked to land-use change through satellite data. I started coming to Coding Club in 2017 and the journey since then has provided me with an insurmountable love for data that I can’t help but share! I hope that I can use my journey to inspire others and help conquer their coding anxieties, too!
Beverly Tan
I’m a final year Ecological and Environmental Sciences with management undergraduate student, and interested in the use of technology such as unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs) in conservation, environmental and ecological sciences. I also have a passion for learning about new programs and software: I was first introduced to R in Year 2, started regularly attending Coding Club in 2017, and have familiarity with other programs such as ArcGIS and Pix4Dmapper. The Coding Club team, and the friendly and accepting environment has played a key role in inspiring me to boldly take on these ventures I never thought possible, and I am happy to join the team and hopefully inspire my peers to do the same.
Declan Valters
I am a Research Software Engineer working in the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh. I help researchers to write better scientific code, so that they can solve their research questions more efficiently with the right programming tools and methods. I've worked on a variety of software projects including numerical flood modelling, topographic analysis, land-surface modelling, and scientific workflow management. I occasionally blog about scientific programming at https://dvalts.io and tweet about programming under @dvalts. My favourite languages are Python, C++, and Fortran. I originally studied for an undergraduate degree and PhD in Earth sciences, but have since become a full-time software developer.
Haydn Thomas
I’m a third year NERC E3 DTP PhD student investigating the causes and consequences of vegetation change in the tundra biome. My research requires a range of coding tools and software, from using GitHub repositories to hierarchical Bayesian modelling (which I still haven’t quite grasped yet!). I had never even used R before starting my PhD, so a course like this earlier on in my research career would have been immensely valuable: this is a great opportunity to pass on the skills I have learnt onto others. I have a large amount of teaching experience, both as a tutor for Masters and Undergraduate course and as a demonstrator in previous statistics classes, and have been previously nominated for a teaching award.
Pedro Miranda
I'm a PhD student investigating the main floristic patterns and their environmental drivers in Lowland Tropical South America and how these patterns will change due to climate change. Through my project, I gained experience in handling large quantities of data in R, as well as in using different R packages and clustering methods. I began to consistently use this software in my research when I started my PhD and, because of this, I see how valuable an initiative such as Coding Club is for students and young researchers who want/need to acquire coding and data management skills in R.
Gabriela Hajduk
I’m an evolutionary behavioural ecologist, with a particular interest in reproductive and social behaviours. I’m currently doing my PhD at the University of Edinburgh working on the superb fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus). The main focus of my project is to explore the dynamics of inbreeding and infidelity, investigating context-dependent mate choice and the effects of the social environment in this cooperative breeder. Most of my time is spent working with a long-term dataset and modeling in R, however I also carry out fieldwork investigating the interactions between fairy-wren mothers and their sons in Australia. For more information, please see my website.
Kat Keogan
I am an ecologist interested in the effects of environmental change on marine ecosystems. For my PhD I am studying breeding phenology in seabirds, and the way in which they respond to changing conditions. I am researching the patterns, drivers and mechanisms of breeding phenology in a range of seabird species with diverse life history traits. I’m particularly interested in phenological trends on a global scale, and looking for patterns across phylogenetic groups or regions that might help us predict how species respond to environmental change. You can find more information here.
Claudia Meca
I'm in my 4th (and last!) year of my undergraduate degree in Ecological and Environmental Sciences. My interests lie in sustainable development and peaceful coexistence with nature i.e. permaculture and my passion is definitely wildlife conservation! My dissertation will focus on biodiversity changes and ecosystem interactions across altitudes, with access to data from cloud forests in Peru and alpine tundra in Canada. For this, I will of course, be using R. I was introduced to R two years ago and since then have become fascinated by with what computers can produce with a simple script of code. It has been a love-hate relationship (but mostly love) and I want to show as many people as possible that coding is not as abstract or inaccessible as it looks!
Sam Kellerhals
I'm an undergraduate in my final year studying ecological & environmental sciences at the University of Edinburgh, with my honours project focusing on quantifying the above-ground carbon stored in Arctic ecosystems. Over the years I've delved into many projects, from founding Elpis Solar, a non-profit developing solar-powered infrastructure for refugee camps, to establishing the Edinburgh Mindfulness Ambassador Award and Social Innovation Forum. Coding Club is a unique opportunity for students across the department of Geosciences to broaden their knowledge and advance their field through working at the intersection of Environmental Science and Informatics. I am excited to be part of this journey!
Eleanor Walker
I am currently in my fourth year studying Ecological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. Having proficient coding skills promises to become of more importance as I enter my final year. In particular, to aid with independent research projects such as my dissertation. Being a class representative for my degree programme has given me the opportunity to talk to peers about potential ways to increase student support in this area. Joining a research expedition this summer lead by Dr Isla Myers-Smith has taught me valuable techniques such as technical expertise, data analysis and ethics in the field, while enabling me to work with a team of scientist who are experts in their field.
Joe Boyle
I’m a fourth-year ecology student looking for ways to improve my R skills without having to read books about it alone in a darkened room. I've been a member of Team Shrub since November 2014, including the 2015 field season, from which I gained direct experience in scientific practice, including some coding. I’ve been trying to practice R whenever I can, but it’s difficult to know what’s possible of myself and the software without some outside help. Considering how important R is for modern ecology, this course should give me some of the skills I need to improve both my final year’s work and anything beyond.
Dr Kyle Dexter
Dr Kyle Dexter is a Lecturer in Plant Ecology at the University of Edinburgh and a Research Associate at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Much of his teaching focuses on statistics, at the undergraduate, masters and Ph.D. levels, while he also teaches forest ecology and a field course on plant and invertebrate identification. His research focuses on large-scale eco-evolutionary studies of tropical plants. He completed his Ph.D. in the USA and a postdoctoral fellowship in France prior to moving to the UK and thus has experience with a variety of pedagogical environments. For more information, check out the research group's website.
Dr Christina Coakley
Dr Christina Coakley is a University Teacher within the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh. She has created a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to develop a basic understanding of the R Statistical Software among undergraduate students and fully supports the advancement of quantitative teaching through in-person and online distance learning.
Collaborators
We are very keen to connect with people around the world who are also interested in promoting skills in statistics and programming and would love to organise collaborative workshops, so feel free to get in touch with us.
Francesca Mancini
Francesca is a PhD student from the University of Aberdeen, where she uses computational methods and non-conventional data sources to study sustainability of socio-ecological systems. Francesca is also the leader of the Aberdeen Study Group and together we organised Coding Club's first joint workshop on quantifying population change and visualising species occurrence. You can read more about our joint workshop on the Team Shrub blog and Francesca's blog. We look forward to working together again in the future!
Koenraad van Meerbeek
I am a postdoc at the Center for Biodiversity Dynamics in a changing world at Aarhus University in Denmark. My PhD at the University of Leuven (Belgium) was about the link between nature conservation and bioenergy production. Now, I am studying the effects of global change drivers (climate change, invasive species) on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning on a global scale. I am also interested in how to best design nature conservation in the future. As a nature conservation manager of a protected area in Belgium, I also have practical experience in protecting the regional biodiversity. I really love statistics and I try to learn as much as possible (so much to learn!). By teaching and developing tutorials, I want to pass on this fascination to other people. I will soon move to fixed position in Belgium, where I will be teaching courses like Ecology, Botany and Ecological data processing (statistics!).
Max Farrell
Max Farrell is a PhD student in the Biology Department at McGill University. His research merges theory and tools from macroecology, computational statistics, and biodiversity genomics to study interactions between hosts and parasites. You can check out the `Stan` tutorial we developped with Max here.
