Tanya Strydom

Tanya Strydom

Postdoctoral Researcher

School of Biosciences, University of Sheffield

A Scientist in training (and self-diagnosed theoretical ecologist) who loves playing outside in the mountains and wants to understand why communities are structured the way that they are. Being the maths geek nerd that I am my PhD has taken on a distinctly computational flavour and aims to help us improve our understanding and ability to make more global generalisations about ecological communities - although I sometimes find myself reverting back to my ‘microecology’ roots and getting caught up in the weeds at times 🙈. Current interests include (but are not limited to): ecological networks, species traits, the role of scale and how all that fits together. Now also featuring dinosaurs! 🦖

A plant ecologist by inclination I can usually be found gushing about how cute a particular grass (or succulent) is, hanging off of the side of a mountain or going on bike-ventures to various coffee shops. When the weather forces me indoors I’m most likely spending way more time than I need to trying to automate a process that could be done in a few minutes, exercising my creative side or trying to find new (and pretty) ways in which to visualise data and results i.e. combining my geeky self with my artistic alter-ego.

Interests

  • Computational approaches to ecological questions
  • FAIR and Open Science
  • Data visualisation
  • Dabbling in artistic pursuits

Education

  • PhD in Biological Sciences, 2024

    Université de Montréal | Canada

  • MSc in Ecology and Biodiversity, 2020

    Stockholms Universitet | Sweden

  • BSc (Hons) in Plant Sciences, 2017

    University of Pretoria | South Africa

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