Hi!

I’m Michael D. Catchen (he/him).

I’m an IVADO Postdoctoral Fellow in the Poisot Computational Ecology Lab at the Université de Montréal. I received my PhD from McGill University under the supervision of Dr. Andy Gonzalez, working on computational methods to understand biogeography and the dynamics of species interaction networks.

Currently, my research focuses on species distribution modeling using machine learning, making “black-box” ML models interpretable for environmental management and conservation decision making, and designing biodiversity monitoring programs to best understand how human activity is changing life on Earth. I’m also usually doing some networky (and at least tangentially ecological) stuff on the side. You can read more here.

Besides science, I like nature, cooking, punk music, breakfast burritos, life, math for it’s own sake, and a bunch of other things. If you want to talk about science, or something else, hit me up.