Julia joined Lewis Research Group in May 2022 and assesses human impacts on ecosystems using citizen science and machine learning. More precisely, she applies Bayesian Network modelling and machine learning methods to predict angler pressure, spatial connectivity and disease spread in fisheries using data from the MyCatch mobile app developed by Angler’s Atlas.
Julia completed her PhD in Ecological System Science at the University of Osnabrück in cooperation with the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, UFZ Leipzig. Her thesis, entitled “Modeling species-rich ecosystems to understand community dynamics and structures emerging from individual plant interactions” laid a foundation to analyze, understand and predict vegetation dynamics and interactions using a mechanistic individual-based grassland model and network science.
Julia holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in Applied Mathematics (Leipzig University of Applied Sciences, HTWK). Her bachelor’s thesis focused on calculating the probability of large epidemic disease outbreaks using stochastic processes in epidemiological modeling. In her master’s thesis, she applied network science to tropical forests to analyze spatial tree and tree species structures.
Julia has experience supervising undergraduate students by participating at a winter school on ecological modeling and by supervising an intern. In her previous research institute, she organized several internal events to foster the exchange of research ideas and methods. She is expanding her knowledge in the field of machine learning by being a member of a research group that focuses on the application of various machine learning algorithms in the environmental context. In her leisure she likes to do sports and cook, travel and spend a lot of time in nature.