DTU has appointed a new professor to focus on the statistical modelling of marine systems and, in particular, models for fish stock reassessment.
Anders Nielsen is a statistician from the University of Copenhagen and has developed the assessment model used to manage more than 20 commercially important fish stocks at the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). Research conducted at the ICES informs decision makers on the sustainable use of fish stocks in the coming years.
Fish are, by their very nature, difficult to count. Therefore, statistical models are essential in assessing the status of the stocks. The models are able to estimate what cannot be observed directly by making calculations on accessible data, e.g. statistics of fish landings and monitoring data from scientific cruises.
Fisheries research is a unique area within applied statistics. The combination of relatively complicated high dimensional models and the need for fast estimation puts high demands on both models and software. These demands has caused the field of fisheries research to develop modelling tools which are applicable in other areas.
Anders was first employed at the Danish Institute for Fisheries Research (now DTU Aqua) in 1997 as a student computing assistant. In 2008, he was employed as scientist at DTU Aqua and in 2012 he was appointed senior scientist.
