Bayesian modeling workshop

The first Simons CBIOMES workshop on Bayesian methods in plankton modeling was held on January 8-10, 2020, at the Samberg Conference Center on th MIT campus. Twenty eight participants represented all 10 of the CBIOMES Investigator labs. The workshop combined introductory lectures, instruction in use of the “Stan” software toolkit, and focused ‘hackathon’ time where participants tackled targeted problems from their research using Bayesian statistical methodology. For example, a group from USC, Flatiron and Dalhousie elucidated the interaction network from a high resolution multivariate time series of marine bacterial taxa. A team from UW, MIT, Dalhousie, and USC tested a novel parameterization relating bacterial division rates and cell size distributions that significantly improved their ability to quantify growth rates from continuous monitoring of cell size distributions using the SeaFlow instrument. These are practical advances towards real problems in monitoring and understanding the dynamics of marine microbial communities.

Pictured below are Crispin Mutshinda, Joe Siddons, and Jonathan Bradet-Legris collaborating with colleagues on model development.