Staff & Expertise

On this page you find a short description of the interest of Highland Statistic staff and

	Dr Alain Zuur
	Dr Elena Ieno
	Professor Ian Jolliffe
	Professor Anatoly Saveliev
	Dr Erik Meesters

Alain F. Zuur, PhD. Highland Statistics

Alain Zuur is senior statistician and director of Highland Statistics Ltd. As a statistical consultant he has contributed to a wide range of projects related to marine biology, oceanography, ecology, fisheries, etc. He is honorary research fellow in the School of Biological Sciences, Oceanlab, at the University of Aberdeen, UK. Alain has worked as a statistical consultant at FRS Marine Laboratory, University of Aberdeen, Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) and TNO-IGG.

Interest: Application of statistical methods to ecological and environmental data. Especially the application of GLM and GAM on nested, time series or spatial data (GLMM, GAMM), mixed modelling, time series analysis, and multivariate analysis.

Selected publications:

	Analysing Ecological Data by Zuur, Ieno and Smith (2007). Springer. 680p. ·
	Analysing Ecological Data using GLMM and GAMM with R. by: Zuur, Ieno, Walker and Smith. (Expected publication date: 2008). Springer.
	An introduction to R for life scientists. Zuur, Ieno and Meesters. (Expected publication date: 2008). Springer.
	Zuur, A.F., Fryer, R.J., Jolliffe, I.T., Dekker, R. and Beukema, J.J. (2003). Estimating common trends in multivariate time series using dynamic factor analysis. Environmetrics, 14(7): 665-685.
	Further publications: http://www.highstat.com/books.htm

Selected consultancy contracts: ·

	Power analysis on cod welfare data for Johnson Seafarms Ltd, Shetland, UK (2007).
	Analysis of whale data for the University of Aberdeen (2007).
	Statistical consultancy for the BAGPIPES project (bio-diversity), Oceanlab, University of Aberdeen (2006/2007), in co-operation with the University of York and the St. Andrews University.
	Statistical consultancy for two NERC projects, Oceanlab, University of Aberdeen (2007 and 2008).
	Further consultancy projects: http://www.highstat.com/consultancy.htm

Elena Ieno PhD. Highland Statistics

Elena Ieno is senior marine biologist at Highland Statistics Ltd. In 2004 she left academia to work full time in statistical consultancy. She now teaches statistics to ecologists and has shown she can bridge the gap between the two disciplines and dispel the dread of statistics shown by most biologists. She is also involved in various international statistical consultancy projects, and is honorary research fellow in the School of Biological Sciences, Oceanlab, at the University of Aberdeen, UK.

Selected books and recent publications

	Ieno, E.N., Solan, M., Batty, P. & Pierce, G.J., 2006. Distinguishing between the effects of infaunal species richness, identity and density in the marine benthos. Marine Ecology Progress Series 311: 263-271.
	Heger A., Ieno E.N., King N.J., Morris K.J., Bagley P.M. and Priede I.G. (In press). Deep-sea pelagic bioluminescence over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Deep-Sea Research.
	Analysing Ecological Data by Zuur, Ieno and Smith (2007). Springer. 680p. ·
	Analysing Ecological Data using GLMM and GAMM with R. by: Zuur, Ieno, Walker and Smith. (Expected publication date: 2008). Springer.
	An introduction to R for life scientists. Zuur, Ieno and Meesters. (Expected publication date: 2008). Springer.

Highland Statistics business associates

Ian Jolliffe, Emeritus Professor University of Aberdeen, Visiting Professor University of Exeter, Honorary Professor University of Kent.

Ian has nearly 40 years experience teaching, researching and applying statistics. His main interests are currently in Multivariate Analysis, in particular Principal Component Analysis, for which he is author of the definitive book on the subject – see below – and in Forecast Verification, for which he co-edited another book. He is co-author of two other books and author or co-author of more than 80 refereed papers or contributions to books. Ian’s expertise ranges over many topics in applied statistics in addition to his main interests. He has taught a wide variety of subjects at levels ranging from elementary to postgraduate.

Books:

	I.T.Jolliffe (1986, Second edition 2002). Principal component analysis. Springer-Verlag
	E.E.Bassett, J.M. Bremner, I. T. Jolliffe, B.Jones, B.J.T. Morgan and P.M. North (1986, Second edition 2000). Statistics - Problems and Solutions. Edward Arnold
	(Second edition, World Scientific).
	P.H. Garthwaite, I.T.Jolliffe (1995) Statistical Inference. Ellis Horwood
	(2002 Second edition, Oxford)
	I.T.Jolliffe and D.B. Stephenson (eds) (2003) Forecast verification: a practitioner’s guide in atmospheric science. Wiley.

Anatoly Saveliev, Professor in statistics at the Faculty of Geography and Ecology at Kazan State University, in Russia.

Anatoly teaches statistics, geostatistics and GIS. As a statistical consultant he has contributed to a wide range of environmental impact assessment projects for the regional oil industry and government. He is also involved with the development of the images processing software ScanEx.

Interest:

Application of (geo)statistical methods to spatial ecological (vegetation) and environmental data. RS images processing and implementation of data analysis and modelling techniques in GIS. Application of GLM, GAM, geostatistical methods (kriging) and artificial neural networks on spatial data.

Selected publications:

	First author of two spatial modelling chapters in Analysing Ecological Data by Zuur, Ieno and Smith (2007). Springer. 680p.
	Saveliev A.A., A. V. Romanov, S. S. Mukharamova, 2005. Automated mapping using multilevel B-Splines. Applied GIS, Vol. 1, No.2.
	Saveliev A.A., Dobrinin D.V. The use of Kohonen's neural nets for the detection of land-cover transitions. In: Proceedings of the First International Workshop on the Analysis of Multitemporal Remote Sensing Images. Proceedings of Multytemp 2001. Series in Remote Sensing, World Scientific, Singapure. - 2002. - V.2. - P.148-155.

Erik Meesters (PhD), marine ecologist and biostatistician in the ecology department of the Institute of Marine Resources and Ecosystem Studies (IMARES) from Wageningen University, The Netherlands.

He graduated in coral reef ecology but developed a taste for statistics, which broadened his line of work into many different fields of ecology. he now provides statistical advice and consultancy at IMARES. His recent work involved coral growth (which required mixed modelling), harbour porpoise and harbour seal diet studies (multivariate analysis), detection of bird movement with radar (classification trees), multivariate benthos studies, and GAMs to analyse the effects of air traffic on fouraging waders.

Interest:

Mixed modelling, Generalized Additive Modelling, programming, multivariate statistics, Classification and Regression Trees, R.

Selected publications:

	First author of one chapter on classification trees in Analysing Ecological Data by Zuur, Ieno and Smith (2007). Springer. 680p.
	An introduction to R for life scientists. Zuur, Ieno and Meesters. (Expected publication date: 2008). Springer.
	Bak, R. P. M., G. Nieuwland and E. H. Meesters (2005). Coral reef crisis in deep and shallow reefs: 30 years of constancy and change in reefs of Curacao and Bonaire. Coral Reefs 24: 475 - 480.
	Coral growth rates revisited: could lower extension rates in Acropora palmata be due to acidification? Rolf PM Bak, Gerard Nieuwland, Erik H Meesters. Submitted to Coral Reefs.

Selected consultancy contracts:

	Effects of air traffic on fouraging waders (2007). Statistical consultancy in a study for Den Helder Airport (The Netherlands) on the effects of air traffic on water birds using GAMs.
	North Sea benthos surveys 2001-2005: A biological and environmental analysis. Multivariate statistical consultancy in cooperation with TNO, The Netherlands. As part of the European project MESH
	Habitat modelling for management and management decisions. A comparison of techniques (GLM, GAM, CART) for Westerscheldt benthos (Dutch) for RIKZ, the Netherlands (2006).
	Ecotopes and species composition of the Westerscheldt: can ecotopes be distinguished by species composition? Multivariate analyses for RIKZ, the Netherlands (2006)