Pembroke host NERC Advanced Training Short Course led by Tutorial Fellow and Associate Professor Dr Rob Salguero-Gomez

Pembroke Tutorial Fellow and Associate Professor Dr Rob Salguero-Gomez recently organised a week long workshop at Pembroke College to teach on the application of Matrix Population Models (MPM) and Integral Population Models (IPM). The funding was provided by the Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC), and allowed Dr Salguero-Gomez to host 34 participants, as well as 5 other leading instructors in IPMs. The students, postdocs and faculty that attended the workshop travelled from all over the UK and globally, including Australia, India, USA and Argentina.

During this weeklong course, the group was introduced to MPMs and IPMs, models regularly used by ecologists to predict species population viability, growth rates, responses to climate change, invasion ability, and more.

The week involved a series of mini-lectures conducted by the instructors, followed by practical exercises. At the end of the week, the participants each presented their respective research projects using the IPMs learnt throughout the course.

Based on group feedback at the end of the week, the course was extremely well received. The self-assessment that was provided showed that everyone felt they had drastically improved in their understanding of various aspects involved in this demographic research.

Dr Salguero-Gomez commented on the event: "We would not have been able to run this workshop without the support of NERC, as well as without the support of Pembroke, and its wonderful conference and dining teams".

To visit Dr Salguero-Gomez's NERC short course website, please click here.