NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2013

生物学博士后研究奖学金：不确定世界的管理：面对政权更迭的稳健决策理论本研究将探索在潜在动态不确定的情况下更稳健地管理生态系统的方法。这项工作试图将迄今基本上孤立发展的数学和生物学方法联系起来，例如最优控制(来自决策理论工作)和早期预警信号(来自复原力工作)，以及机器学习方法(来自统计学和计算机科学)。为了将这项工作固定在现实世界问题的生物学中，例子和应用将来自海洋渔业的生态系统动态和经济问题。该项目的三个主要目标是：(1)开发一种将预警信号集成到决策理论框架中的方法(2)探索非参数贝叶斯推理如何解释生态动力学中的结构性不确定性，(3)探索如何在这些领域中开发主动学习方法来设计积极减少不确定性的适应性管理政策。面对深度不确定性的有效决策是许多学科面临的根本挑战。能够提高在这种情况下选择健壮操作的能力的方法可能具有深远的价值。这种现实世界的应用只有在更大的研究人员和管理人员社区中渗透和开发时才会出现。考虑到这一点，该项目还试图通过使用和开发在线开放实验室笔记本，对科学界、科学教育界和广大公众产生更直接的影响。在线笔记本将记录这项研究的日常进展，同时还将探索能够促进科学基础设施、合作和成果传播的机制和技术。请参阅http://carlboettiger.info/lab-notebook.

Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology: Management for an uncertain world: robust decision theory in face of regime shiftsThis research will explore methods for more robust management of ecosystems when the underlying dynamics are uncertain. This work seeks to bridge mathematical and biological methods that have hitherto been developed largely in isolation, such as optimal control (from decision-theoretic work) and early warning signals (from resilience work) as well as machine learning approaches (from statistics and computer science). To anchor this work in the biology of a real world problem, examples and applications will come from the ecosystem dynamics and economic concerns of marine fisheries. The three main objectives of this project are: (1) Develop an approach to integrate early warning signals into a decision-theory framework (2) explore how nonparametric Bayesian inference can account for structural uncertainty in ecological dynamics, (3) explore how active learning approaches in each of these areas could be developed to design adaptive management policies that actively decrease uncertainty.Effective decision-making in face of deep uncertainty is a fundamental challenge across many disciplines. Methods that can improve the ability to select robust actions under such circumstances may have far reaching value. Such real-world applications will only emerge as they are percolated through and developed by a larger community of researchers and managers. With this in mind, this project also seeks to promote a more immediate impact to the scientific community, the science education community, and the public at large through the use and development of an online open laboratory notebook. The online notebook will chronicle the daily advances in this research while also exploring mechanisms and technology that can advance scientific infrastructure, collaboration and dissemination of results. See http://carlboettiger.info/lab-notebook.