Ian Carroll

Quantitative Ecologist trained in statistics and ecosystem modeling, now a professional data scientist and instructor fostering collaborative workflows across disciplinary boundaries.

Toolbox

Programming	Math & Stats
Python, R, C, SQL, CUDA, git, Mathematica,	ordinary, partial, and stochastic DEs; hierarchical
MATLAB, Bash, Jekyll, CSS, LaTeX, Docker,	Bayes; generalized linear mixed models; random forests;
JavaScript, RegExp, Google Earth Engine	MCMC; particle filters; time series models; neural networks

Education

Ph. D. in Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology	2006-09-28/2012-09-15
University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB)

Dissertation developed analytical models of stochasticity’s role in biodiversity maintenance, advised by Prof. Roger Nisbet. Models coded de novo to run on a 110 MPI node cluster in the Center for Scientific Computing at UCSB. Research funding received from UC Reserve System, UCSB Graduate Division, and American Phycological Society. Teaching experience included co-lecturer for “Introduction to Ecology” and several TA-ships. Honors: NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, Regents Special Fellow, Worster Award for Student Mentors.

B.A. with Honors in Biology	1999-09/2003-05
Brown University

Prof. Jennifer Hughes-Martiny advised an honors project with E. coli microcosom experiments and analytical models of resource competition. Honors: Caleel Prize for Academic Excellence.

Work Experience

Associate Research Scientist at UMBC	since 2021-12-01
Associate Scientist at USRA	2021-08-16/2021-11-30
Ocean Ecology Lab (NASA/GSFC#616)	$87,600

Researching machine learning applications to chracterize phytoplankton community composition from hyperspectral ocean color.

Data Volunteer	2020-09/2020-11
Ohio Democratic Party	$0

Cleaned and augmented voter files through Votebuilder/NGP VAN. Reported phone/text canvassing activity metrics, calculated from mobile app data hosted on Google BigQuery, to support decision making by campaign strategists working to Get Out the Vote.

Lead Data Scientist	2020-02/2020-05-15
Data Scientist	2019-08-05/2020-02
Kimetrica LLC	$95,000

Participating in the DARPA World Modelers program, lead the design and development of data-driven models for environmental and economic variables over East Africa. Collected and curated satellite imagery and other large-scale geospatial datasets for the region using both Amazon S3 and an in-house CKAN data portal. Distributed results with data visualizations and graphical model-assessments in Jupyter Notebooks. Integrated work with colleagues using version control and a self-hosted GitLab server.

Senior Data Scientist	2018-05/2019-08-02
Data Scientist	2016-05-23/2018-05
National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC)	$86,000

Developed curricula for and lead intensive short courses to train researchers on reproducible workflows for data synthesis, analysis, and visualization using scripted pipelines in R and Python. Courses taught primarily at SESYNC but also at local universities and one international scientific conference. Data scientist participant on inter-disciplinary research teams funded by SESYNC, primarily responsible for planning and designing approaches to synthesize datasets: including geospatial raster and vector datasets, high resolution time-series observations, experimental results, and free-form text/unstructured data. Coding performed primarily in R on the Center’s self-hosted RStudio Server. Worked with IT to launch a parallel Jupyter Hub server to encourage Python based projects. As Senior Data Scientist, supervised two data scientists and two graduate assistants.

Postdoctoral Fellow in Biology	2014-05/2016-04
Georgetown University	$56,000

Basic research on animal disease propagation through livestock tracing and network modeling. Designed and populated a PostgreSQL database of cattle market records (county-of-origin and price) scraped from websites using automated pipelines coded in Python. Developed Bayesian predictive models of cattle trade networks for epidemic inference. Managed and taught Python to five undergraduate and masters student research assistants.

Postdoctoral Scholar in Biology	2012-11-05/2014-05-03
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution	$57,000

Competitive 18-month scholarship awarded for research on phytoplankton population dynamics. Used machine learning to classify marine phytoplankton from in-situ microscopic imagery, with a novel probabilistic interpretation of random forests. Utilized GPU for parallel computations. Submitted NSF proposal to couple automatically classified cell images to phytoplankton community model and accommodate classification errors using particle filtering.

Research Assistant	2005-03/2006-06
Heinz Center for Science, Economics & Environment	$30,000

Designed and created data visualizations for sections of the “State of the Nation’s Ecosystems” report on non-native and invasive species. Researched and authored internal report on data gaps for air-quality indicators.

Biological Field Technician (0404)	2004-06/2004-12
US Forest Service

Carried out field work in remote regions of the Sierra Nevada, surveying threatened amphibian species and their habitat. Entered data in MS Access database and created population status maps in ArcGIS. Required to carry 50lbs of equipment at altitudes of 10-12K feet over 25 miles from nearest road access.

Peer Reviewed Publications

• Cetinić, I., C. S. Rousseaux, I. T. Carroll, A. P. Chase, S. J. Kramer, P. J. Werdell, D. A. Siegel, H. M. Dierssen, D. Catlett, A. Neeley, I. M. Soto Ramos, J. L. Wolny, N. Sadoff, E. Urquhart, T. K. Westberry, D. Stramski, N. Pahlevan, B. N. Seegers, E. Sirk, P. Kienteca Lange, R. A. Vandermeulen, J. R. Graff, J. G. Allen, P. Gaube, L. I. W. McKinna, S. M. McKibben, C. E. Binding, V. Sanjuan Calzado, and M. Sayers. 2024. Phytoplankton composition from sPACE: requirements, opportunities, and challenges. Remote Sensing of Environment 302(113964).

• Avolio, M. L., I. T. Carroll, S. Collins, G. Houseman, F. Isbell, S. Koerner, K. La Pierre, M. Smith, K. Wilcox, and L. Hallett. 2019. A comprehensive approach to analyzing community dynamics using rank abundance curves. Ecosphere 10(10):02881.

• Carroll, I. T. and R. M. Nisbet. 2015. Departures from neutrality induced by niche and relative fitness differences. Theoretical Ecology 8(4):449-465.

• Narwani, A., M. A. Alexandrou, T. Oakley, I. T. Carroll, and B. J. Cardinale. 2013. Experimental evidence that evolutionary relatedness does not affect the ecological mechanisms of coexistence in freshwater green algae. Ecology Letters 16(11):1373-81.

• Carroll, I. T., B. J. Cardinale, and R. M. Nisbet. 2011. Niche and fitness differences relate the maintenance of diversity to ecosystem function. Ecology 92(5):1157-1165.

• Cardinale B. J., D. S. Srivastava, J. E. Duffy, J. P. Wright, A. L. Downing, M. Sankaran, C. Jousea, M. W. Cadotte, I. T. Carroll, J. J. Weis, A. Hector, and M. Loreau. 2009. Effects of biodiversity on the functioning of ecosystems: A summary of 164 experimental manipulations of species richness. Ecology (data paper), 90(3): 854.

• Doak D. F., J. A. Estes, B. S. Halpern, U. Jacob, D. R. Lindberg, J. Lovvorn, D. H. Monson, M. T. Tinker, T. M. Williams, J. T. Wootton, I. T. Carroll, M. Emmerson, F. Micheli, and M. Novak. 2008. Understanding and predicting ecological dynamics: Are major surprises inevitable? Ecology 89(4): 952-961.

• Cardinale, B. J., J. P. Wright, M. W. Cadotte, I. T. Carroll, A. Hector, D. S. Srivastava, M. Loreau, and J. J. Weis. 2007. Impacts of plant diversity on biomass production increase through time due to species complementarity. PNAS 104(46): 18123-18128.

• Chikarmane H. M., A. M. Kuzirian, I. T. Carroll, and R. Dengler. 2001. Development of genetically tagged bay scallops for evaluation of seeding programs. Biological Bulletin 201(2):285-6.

Additional Products

• Hallett, L., M. Avolio, I. T. Carroll, S. K. Jones, A. A. MacDonald, D. F. B. Flynn, P. Slaughter, J. Ripplinger, S. L. Collins, C. Gries, M. B. Jones. 2018. codyn: Community Dynamics Metrics. CRAN.

• Marchand, P., M. Smorul, and I. T. Carroll. 2017. rslurm: Submit R Calculations to a Slurm Cluster. CRAN.

• Carroll, I. T., and S. Bansal. 2014. Cattle auction markets in the USA: a de-duplicated list compiled from trade association and federal agency directories. Harvard Dataverse.

• Carroll, I. T., M. G. Neubert, and H. M. Sosik. 2014. Mistakes were made: sampling models for automated classification of phytoplankton. ESA Annual Meeting. Sacramento, CA.

• Carroll, I. T. 2012. Niche theory and the persistence of populations: applications to competitive communities and an infectious disease. Doctoral dissertation, UC Santa Barbara. ProQuest/UMI AAT 3545029.

• Carroll, I. T., C. J. Briggs, and R. M. Nisbet. 2012. Signature of initial states in absorbing Markov chains: theory and an application to Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis infection. ESA Annual Meeting. Portland, OR.

• Carroll, I. T. and R. M. Nisbet. 2011. From birth-death process to observed macrostates in neutral and non-neutral ecological communities. Gordon Research Conference: Stochastic Physics in Biology. Ventura, CA.

• Carroll, I. T. and R. M. Nisbet. 2010. Opposing effects of density-independent and density-dependent selection on species abundance distributions. ESA Annual Meeting. Pittsburg, PA.

• Matulich K. L., I. T. Carroll, and B. J. Cardinale. 2009. Priority effects: initial densities alter exponential growth rates of competing species. ESA Annual Meeting. Albuquerque, NM.

• Carroll, I. T. and B. J. Cardinale. 2009. Diversity-stability relationships with competition for variable resources: Diversity and niche breadth are stabilizing. ESA Annual Meeting. Albuquerque, NM.

• Carroll, I. T. and B. J. Cardinale. 2007. The balance of niche and neutral processes dictate the effects of biodiversity on ecosystem production. ESA Annual Meeting. San Jose, CA.

• Carroll, I. T. and L. A. Meyerson. 2005. Number of New Introductions as an Indicator of Biological Invasion. ESA Annual Meeting. Montreal, QC.

• Carroll, I. T. and J. B. Hughes. 2003. Metabolic cross-feeding in two-species bacterial communities. Gordon Research Conference in Microbial Population Biology. Andover, NH.

Updated on 2021-10-05