1. This workshop aims to bring together scientists and developers working on two distinct but
overlapping challenges for advancing software for ecological forecasting: improving model-
data fusion and prediction workflows (scientific workflows) and facilitating inter-operability
of different statistical engines (inferences engines). The public is welcome to attend the
following three sessions.
Janine Illian: Flexible and
fast spatial modelling – an
introduction to spatial modelling
with R-INLA
Monday, March 24, 2014
10:30 AM – 11:30 AM
IGB, room 3000
(1206 W Gregory Drive, Urbana)
Janine B Illian, University of St
Andrews, UK and NTNU Trondheim,
Norway Integrated nested Laplace
approximation (INLA) facilitates the
fitting of a large range of complex
statistical models, such as hierarchical
models or spatial point process models by
dramatically reducing computation time.
Janine will discuss how spatial models
may be fitted with INLA using the package
R-INLA and we will consider a number
of different types of spatial models. As
a software demonstration, the audience
is encouraged to explore the software by
fitting some simple models.
To participate in the demonstration, please
bring your laptop with R and R-INLA
installed.
Plenary overview of software
projects, challenges, and
opportunities
Tuesday March 25, 2014
9:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Excellence Room, iHotel
(1900 S 1st Street, Champaign)
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM
Plenary talks - Organizers will introduce
the scope, goals and intended outcomes of
the workshop.
David LeBauer
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Perry de Valpine
University of California, Berkeley
Matthew Smith
Microsoft Research, Cambridge
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Overview session software developments
Ecological forecasting projects - This
session will feature a series of four-minute
lightning talks by the leads of twenty
software projects that facilitate scientific
workflows and statistical inference.
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Scientific Workflow Projects
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Inference Engines Projects
Aaron Ellison – Keynote
Address:“Reaching the 99%:
making statistical software
relevant and useful for
ecologists”
Wednesday March 26, 2014
9:00 AM – 9:45 AM
Excellence Room, iHotel
Aaron Ellison is a Senior Research
Fellow in Ecology at Harvard University.
He works on food web dynamics
and community ecology of wetlands
and forests, evolutionary ecology of
carnivorous plants, the response of plants
and ants to global climate change, and the
application of Bayesian statistical inference
to ecological research and environmental
decision-making. Editor in Chief of
Ecological Monographs and co-author of
“A Primer of Ecological Statistics”.
NIMBLE, Filzbach, PEcAn, OpenBUGS,
POMP, PyMC, JAGS, DART, R-INLA,
ADMB, STAN
PEcAn, EcoPAD, Kepler, ARIES, ESMF,
EwE: EcoPath with EcoSim, Analytic Web,
ROpenSci