Rachael E. Blake

Assistant Director of Data Science

Dr. Rachael Blake was the Assistant Director of Data Science until 2022, after joining SESYNC as a Data Scientist in 2018. She led the data science team in supporting all aspects of the data and computational needs of SESYNC-funded teams. Rachael’s research focused on biodiversity, community structure, and the impacts of multiple stressors in marine ecosystems. She also studied how changes in these ecosystems influence social and ecological well-being. Rachael used data synthesis, as well as field and lab experiments, to test assumptions and hypotheses. In addition, she was interested in furthering open science and using data science tools to improve workflows and reproducible research methods. Prior to her work at SESYNC, Rachael was a member of the ecoinformatics team at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. She has also researched oil spill impacts on coastal ecosystems in Alaska and Louisiana and the effects of coastal development on seagrass beds in Chesapeake Bay, Virginia. She received her PhD in Marine Science in 2012 from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William & Mary.

External Links:
https://www.rachaeleblake.com/

Image
Photo of Rachael E. Blake
2018 - 2022
Areas of Expertise
data science
marine ecology
Research Interests
reproducible research
collaborative open science
data documentation
biodiversity
multiple stressors
ecosystem functioning
invasive species
Methods of Expertise
R
git
structural equation modeling
random forests
visualization
collaboration