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Distinguished Professor Marti Anderson staff profile picture

Contact details +6492136609

Distinguished Professor Marti Anderson

Adjunct Distinguished Professor in Statistics

New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study

After obtaining a BA in Biology from Occidental (a liberal arts college in Los Angeles CA, USA), I pursued graduate study at the University of Sydney in Australia, where I did a Graduate Diploma in Zoology (first class honours) and a PhD in Marine Ecology with Professor Tony Underwood (achieving the Jabez-King-Heydon prize for the most meritorious PhD thesis), followed by a Masters in Mathematical Statistics (with merit) with Professor John Robinson. After a post-doctoral fellowship with the Institute of Marine Ecology in Sydney, I then took up an academic position as Lecturer in Statistics at the University of Auckland in 1999. I came to Massey University to take up a Professorial Chair in Statistics at the Albany campus in 2009. I joined the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study (NZIAS) in 2011.


Roles and Responsibilities

Deputy Head of Institute, INMS

Head of Statistics, INMS

Co-director of the Coastal-Marine Research Group (C-MRG)

I am an ecological statistician. My work spans several disciplines, from basic biology and ecology through to mathematical and applied statistics. My core research is in community ecology, biodiversity, multivariate analysis, experimental design and resampling methods. My focus is to develop novel statistical methods for the analysis of ecological communities, including appropriate sampling algorithms and models for making valid statistical inferences in these high-dimensional multi-factorial systems.

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Professional

Contact details

  • Ph: +64 9 213-6609
    Location: 2.00, e-centre, Gate 5, Oaklands Rd
    Campus: Albany

Research Expertise

Research Interests

I am an ecological statistician. My work spans several disciplines, from basic biology and ecology through to mathematical and applied statistics. My core research is in the areas of community ecology, biodiversity, multivariate analysis, experimental design and resampling methods. My focus is to develop novel multivariate statistical methods for the analysis of ecological communities, including appropriate underlying sampling algorithms and models for making valid statistical inferences in these high-dimensional multi-factorial systems.

Thematics

Resource Development and Management

Area of Expertise

Field of research codes
Applied Statistics (010401):
Biological Sciences (060000): Community Ecology (060202): Ecology (060200):
Mathematical Sciences (010000): Statistics (010400)

Research Projects

Current Projects

Project Title: Not too hot, not too cold, just right: New models of species' responses to their environment

Date Range: 2020 - 2024

Funding Body: Royal Society of New Zealand

Project Team:

Completed Projects

Project Title: Synergising ecology and evolution: dicovering patterns of functional and phylogenetic diversity of New Zealand's name marine fishes versus depth

Date Range: 2016 - 2019

Funding Body: Royal Society of New Zealand

Project Team:

Project Title: New robust solutions to the multivariate Behrens-Fisher problem

Imagine sampling two communities of butterflies and asking: do they differ? Testing for a (mean) difference is not possible if one community is more variable than the other. For a single measurement (e.g. community diversity), this is `Behrens-Fisher', one of the oldest problems in statistics. We will combine bootstrapping methods with distance-based tests, avoiding classical assumptions, to yield novel robust solutions to the multivariate (multi-species) Behrens-Fisher problem. This work will generate new possibilities for simultaneous inferences on means and variances in ecology. More broadly, it will crack current barriers to analysing any multivariate dataset where classical approaches fail.
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Date Range: 2011 - 2015

Funding Body: Marsden Fund - Full

Project Team:

Teaching and Supervision

Contact Supervisor

Completed Doctoral Supervision

Main Supervisor of:

  • 2020 - Elisabeth Myers - Doctor of Philosophy
    Functional biodiversity of New Zealand's marine fishes versus depth and latitude
  • 2018 - David Acuna Marrero - Doctor of Philosophy
    Spatial ecology and human perceptions toward sharks in the Galapagos marine reserve

Co-supervisor of:

  • 2021 - Amir Bashir - Doctor of Philosophy
    Sparse Summaries of Complex Covariance Structures
  • 2019 - Nurudeen Adedayo Adegoke - Doctor of Philosophy
    Contributions to improve the power, efficiency and scope of control-chart methods
  • 2016 - Yeserin Yildirim - Doctor of Philosophy
    Genetics Structure of Pleurobranchaea maculata in New Zealand

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Last updated on Monday 27 February 2023