ESTDatS Lab News

August 2025 news

Congratulations to By-pass student, Madison Griffin, for passing her comprehensive exams! She can now transition into the PhD program. Madison also presented her work on oyster cohort analysis in the session titled Shellfish Modeling: Applications in Climate Change, Fisheries and Ecosystem Management at the AFS in San Antonio.
New ESTDatS By-pass student, Aileen McDonald (major advisor: Mary Fabrizio), officially matriculated at VIMS.
Recently defended PhD student Julie Gross, submitted her dissertation to ScholarWorks.
ESTDatS Affiliate, Mahshid Ahmadian (Grace’s VCU PhD student), was awarded a Student Travel Grant by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Central States Section to attend their upcoming conference at U of Arkansas.
Grace’s PhD student at U of Washington, Malcolm Wolff (major advisor: Adrian Dobra), led a journal submission on modeling human mobility patterns. The preprint is on arXiv.
Grace gave an invited Zoom presentation at a MARCO Ocean Planning Committee’s Steering Committee Meeting. She showcased her current work on model-based calibration of gear-specific monitoring data, which she will adapt to the context of cross-regional blue carbon stock assessment in an upcoming project funded by MARCO.

By-pass student Madison Griffin received an OAA Travel Award of $500 to support her upcoming presentation at the AFS.
Grace’s affiliate faculty position at the U of Washington’s Dept of Statistics was renewed.
Madison and Grace attended the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Acidification Network (MACAN) State-of-the-Science and Technical Training workshop held at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center on July 15-17. Madison presented her research in the student flash talks session and received fantastic compliments from the audiences (3 sets). Grace served as the official notetaker for two breakout sessions.
Former PhD student, Julie Gross, began her postdoc in Sean Power's lab at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab / U of S Alabama. Julie telecommutes from VA.
For the first time since late 2023, the ESTDatS Happy Hour activities resumed with a Zoom presentation by former ESTDatS PhD student, Challen Hyman. He presented on some work he has been leading at U of S FL. In-person attendees enjoyed snacks and beverages, followed by a get-together at the nearby YROC.

PhD student Julie Gross successfully defended her PhD - congratulations to Dr. Gross!
By-pass student Madison Griffin was awarded $450 GSA Conference Fund towards her upcoming attendance at the AFS Annual Meeting in San Antonio.
Soon-to-be by-pass student Aileen McDonald started her pre-matriculation RAship. Her application to the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) to join their Student Resources and Activities Committee was successful! She will serve a 3-year term.

ESTDatS members' excellence received formal recognition by VIMS at the 2025 Awards Ceremony!
- PhD student Julie Gross was awarded the 2024 Zeigler Student Achievement Award.
- Grace Chiu received the 2024 Faculty Excellence in Mentoring Award. She was also recognized for reaching her 5-year service milestone.
By-pass student Madison Griffin concluded her training in the "Enhancing Organizational Climate Through Leadership Development" program offered by the VIMS Office of Inclusion and Belonging.
Grace led a preprint on model-based calibration of fishery resource survey data (DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2505.05767). This work is part of a $12M project to estimate the abundance of Greater Amberjack at the continental scale. Also, as a member of the Academic Advisory Council for the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), she attended the council's annual meeting held at UVA this year; the topic was nutrient criteria exceedances and microcystin concentrations.

By-pass student Madison Griffin presented her 7th grade classroom-tested lesson plan titled "Histograms on the Half-Shell" at the annual Virginia Scientists & Educators Alliance (VA SEA) Lesson Plan Exhibition. She also attended the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS) virtual short course titled "From Code to Products - Software Engineering for Data Science". She continues her training in the "Enhancing Organizational Climate Through Leadership Development" program offered by the VIMS Office of Inclusion and Belonging.
Grace Chiu gave an invited seminar (Apr 24) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Department of Statistics on model-based calibration of fishery resource survey data. This work is part of a $12M project to estimate the abundance of Greater Amberjack at the continental scale.

ESTDatS helped to successfully recruit incoming By-pass student, Aileen McDonald (American University '25), who will be coadvised by Mary Fabrizio and Grace Chiu starting Summer 2025. Huge thanks to By-pass student Madison Griffin for helping to coordinate Aileen's itinerary during her visit.
Madison gave an invited poster presentation on her oyster resiliency research at the 10th HBCU Climate Change Conference (Mar 5-9). She also continues her training in the "Enhancing Organizational Climate Through Leadership Development" program offered by the VIMS Office of Inclusion and Belonging.
Affiliate PhD student Mahshid Ahmadian became a committee member for VA Women in HPC.
Grace gave an invited talk (Mar 27) at the Virginia Tech Statistics Colloquium on model-based calibration of fishery resource survey data. This work is part of a $12M project to estimate the abundance of Greater Amberjack at the continental scale.

By-pass student Madison Griffin gave an invited presentation at Tidewater Oyster Gardeners Association Annual meeting (Feb 8). She also started her training in the "Enhancing Organizational Climate Through Leadership Development" program offered by the VIMS Office of Inclusion and Belonging.
Affiliate PhD student Mahshid Ahmadian gave an invited presentation at the VA Women in HPC meeting with the theme “Real Stories about Using HPC in Research” (Feb 25).

By-pass student Madison Griffin received the CB Trust Chesapeake Oyster Innovation Award for her research proposal, travel scholarship to present at the 10th HBCU Climate Change Conference (March 2025, New Orleans), and gave invited talks at Black in Marine Science (BIMS) Week 2024 (San Diego) and the W&M Biomath F24 Seminar Series.
Affiliate PhD student Mahshid Ahmadian presented a poster at the NSF Workshop on Data-driven Modeling and Prediction of Rare and Extreme Events (Chicago) as the only student among all workshop presenters, and also at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Washington-Baltimore Section F24 Meeting.
Grace Chiu gave an invited Statistics Dept Seminar at UBC, and chaired the Modern Approaches session that she organized for The International Environmetrics Society (TIES) 2024 Conference (Adelaide).