Heather
Lynch
IACS Endowed Professor of Ecology & Evolution
IACS and Department of Ecology & Evolution
Office: IACS Room 163
Stony Brook, NY 11794-2424
Phone
(631) 632-2384
Website (URL)
Interests
Remote Sensing, Bayesian inference, time series modelling, imagery classification
Biography
Heather Lynch obtained an AB in Physics from Princeton University in 2000, an AM in Physics from Harvard University in 2004 and a PhD in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University in 2006. She was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Maryland before coming to Stony Brook in 2011.
Awards
Heather Lynch was named an Ecological Society of America Early Career Fellow in 2014 and a National Geographic Explorer in 2019. Heather was named the 2019 Blavatnik Laureate for Young Scientists in the category of Life Sciences (the world’s largest unrestricted prize for young scientists), the first recipient from Stony Brook University to receive the award as well as the first ecologist to ever receive the award. Heather was selected as a AAAS Leshner Fellow in Science Engagement as part of their 2020 cohort focused on Artificial Intelligence.
Research
Recent research grants:
• 2019-2020: (PI) Pew Foundation “Chinstrap status assessment, 2019-2020” (Total budget: $48,200)
• 2019-2020: (co-PI) State University of New York Conversations in the Disciplines “Interpretable Artificial Intelligence: Across the Disciplines” (Total budget: $2,600) (co-PIs: Jeffrey Heinz [Lead], Il Memming Park, Christian Luhmann, Stony Brook University)
• 2019: (PI) National Geographic AI for Earth “Coupling AI with predictive modeling for real-time tracking of Antarctic penguin populations” (Total budget: $95,696) (co-PI: Dimitris Samaras, Stony Brook University)
• 2018: (PI) Alfred P. Sloan Foundation “The Ecological Forecasting Initiative: An Interdisciplinary Conference” (Total budget: $50,000) (Additional PIs: Michael Dietze, Boston University)
• 2017-2020: (PI) NSF EarthCube “Collaborative Research: ICEBERG: Imagery Cyberinfrastructure and Extensible Building-Blocks to Enhance Research in the Geosciences” (Total budget: $1,815,860; Stony Brook University budget $632,179) (Lead PI: Heather Lynch; Additional PIs: Shantenu Jha [Rutgers], Vena Chu [UC Santa Barbara], Mark Salvatore [Northern Arizona University], Michael Willis [UC Boulder]
• 2016-2020: (co-PI) NSF NRT-DESE “Interdisciplinary Graduate Training to Understand and Inform Decision Processes Using Advanced Spatial Data Analysis and Visualization” ($2,993,930) (Lead PI: Robert Harrison; Additional PIs: Minghua Zhang, Arie E. Kaufman, Liliana Davalos Alvarez)
• 2015-2017: (PI) NSF EarthCube “Collaborative Research: Research Coordination Network for High-Performance Distributed Computing in the Polar Sciences” (Total budget $300,000; Stony Brook University budget $27,326) (Lead PI: Shantenu Jha [Rutgers]; Additional PIs: Lynn Yarmey [Colorado] and Jaroslaw Nabrzyski [Notre Dame])
• 2015-2016: (PI) Brookhaven National Lab/Stony Brook University SEED Grant 2015: “Three-dimensional structure and function for ecological monitoring using unmanned-aerial systems and computer vision” (Total budget $41,561; Stony Brook University budget $33,552) (Co-I: Shawn Serbin, Brookhaven National Lab)
• 2015-2018: (PI) NASA ROSES Program Element A.36 Earth Science Applications Phase II award (No. NNX14AC32G): “Bayesian Data-Model Synthesis for Biological Conservation in Antarctica” (Total budget $630,651; Stony Brook University budget $395,475) (Co-I: Mathew Schwaller NASA Goddard)
• 2014-2017: (PI) NSF Office of Polar Programs (No. 1341440): “Phytoplankton Phenology in the Antarctic: Drivers, Patterns, and Implications for the Adélie Penguin” (Collaborative proposal with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the National Snow and Ice Data Center; Total budget $938,950; Stony Brook University budget $108,017)
• 2014-2016: (Collaborator) Dalio Explore Fund: The Danger Islands Expedition: A Multi-scale Study of Remote Penguin Supercolonies ($419,804)
• 2014: (PI) NASA ROSES Program Element A.36 Earth Science Applications Phase I award (No. NNX14AC32G): “Bayesian Data-Model Synthesis for Biological Conservation in Antarctica” (Total budget $170,605; Stony Brook University budget $113,120) (Co-I: Mathew Schwaller NASA Goddard)
• 2013-2018: (PI) NSF CAREER Award in Office of Polar Programs & Geography and Spatial Sciences (No. 1255058): “The use of quantitative geography to predict population tipping points for colonial seabirds” ($782,840)
Teaching Summary
MAR 534, BEE 552, BEE 569