NOAA Sea Grant and Fisheries announce 2018 Joint Fellowship Recipients

The NMFS-Sea Grant Joint Fellowship Program in Population and Ecosystem Dynamics and Marine Resource Economics is designed to help Sea Grant fulfill its broad educational responsibilities and to strengthen the collaboration between Sea Grant and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). Since 1999, Sea Grant?and NMFS have partnered to train students through this?joint fellowship program in two specialized areas: population and ecosystem dynamics as well as?marine resource economics. Population and ecosystem dynamics involve the study of fish populations and marine ecosystems to better assess fishery stock conditions and dynamics.?The goals of the NOAA Fisheries/Sea Grant Fellowship Program are:

• To encourage qualified applicants to pursue careers in either population and ecosystem dynamics and stock assessment or in marine resource economics
• To increase available expertise related to these fields
• To foster closer relationships between academic scientists and NOAA Fisheries
• To provide real-world experience to graduate students and accelerate their career development.

More about the fellowship can be found here: https://seagrant.noaa.gov/NMFS-SG-FellowshipRobert Wildermuth was selected as the MIT Sea Grant Population and Ecosystem Dynamics Fellow. Robert is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and his fellowship will focus on the performance evaluation of qualitative and Bayesian network social-ecological models for use in an integrated system.Robert’s research interests focus on how to use quantitative tools to make effective management decisions with uncertain and incomplete knowledge. His Ph.D. work is looking at how assumptions about the structure and function of marine social-ecological systems can affect decision-making. He applies both quantitative and qualitative models in Bayesian statistical frameworks to analyze decision-support tools for managing the social-ecological system on Georges Bank, USA, including objectives of fisheries sustainability and human wellbeing. Robert earned a B.S. in Zoology and Biological Sciences at Colorado State University and a M.S. in Biology at Arizona State. Research topics included demographic effects of California sea lion aggressive behavior, sexually selected traits in the Trinidadian guppy, and oil spill impacts on marine mammal and mollusk populations. You can learn more about Robert’s work here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=UhATj4oAAAAJ&hl=enMore information about the NOAA Sea Grant and Fisheries 2018 Fellowship Recipients can be found here: https://seagrant.noaa.gov/News/Article/ArtMID/1660/ArticleID/2693/NOAA-Sea-Grant-and-Fisheries-announce-2018-Joint-Fellowship-Recipients