Congratulations to Francis - on submitting his PhD thesis earlier this month. It is a really nice thesis with papers already accepted in Ecology, Methods in Ecology and Evolution, and the Journal of the American Statistical Association. And a few more cracking papers in review.
Farewell - because he is off to a post-doc position at ANU in January, working on mixed models with Alan Welsh and Samuel Mueller. Francis will be missed. He is a friendly, thoughtful, energetic person, who has also been a big contributor in our group and beyond. While keeping his thesis kicking along some other highlights include managing a number of productive collaborations with ecologists on the side, developing and presenting a few EcoStats labs (you can see these in his prev 2014 posts in this blog), and volunteering to teach a full day of introductory statistics material in the now-annual BEES postgrad workshop on intermediate statistics. And co-ordinating Eco-Stats meetings.
Good luck - well everyone could use a little luck every now and then. But the systematic component of the model looks good... Francis has shown himself to be a pretty talented researcher and communicator, so we reckon he is well-placed for an exciting career in statistics methodology and its applications, especially (we hope!) in ecology. Wishing you all the best, Francis!
