Anders Nielsen has been appointed professor at DTU on statistical modelling of fish stocks and marine systems.
DTU has appointed Anders Nielsen professor as of 1 October 2019. His research is focused on statistical modelling of marine systems and in particular models for fish stock assessment. Stock assessments form the scientific basis of the fixing of fishing quotas and other regulations of the fisheries industry.
Anders Nielsen has developed the assessment model used to manage more than 20 commercially important fish stocks at the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) Among these are North sea cod and herring, Northeast Atlandic mackerel, and Northeast Arctic cod ICES is where fisheries biologist and statistician from several countries meet every year to evaluate the status of fish stocks and provide decision makers with advice on the sustainable use of the fish stocks In the coming years.
Fish are—by their very nature—difficult to count. Therefore, statistical models are essential in assessing the status of the stocks. The models are able to estimate what cannot be observed directly by making calculations on accessible data, e.g. statistics of fish landings and monitoring data from scientific cruises.
Fisheries research is a rather unique area within applied statistics. The combination of relative complicated high dimensional models and the need for fast estimation puts high demands on both models and software. These demands has caused the field of fisheries research to develop modelling tools which are applicable in other areas.
Apart from conducting research, Anders Nielsenis teaching courses in stock assessment modelling (e.g. in Norway, US, Namibia, Australia, Canada and UK). Furthermore he lectures at the course “Fisheries systems— management and modelling” at the DTU master’s programme Aquatic Science and Technology.
Background
Anders Nielsen is a statistician from the University of Copenhagen and holds a PhD degree from the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University (now Faculty of Science at University of Copenhagen). In 2005, he was employed as a postdoc at University of Hawaii where he developed models to estimate geographical positions of fish from data recorded via electronic tags.
Anders Nielsen was first employed at the Danish Institute for Fisheries Research (now DTU Aqua) in 1997 as a student computing assistant. In 2008, he was employed as scientist at DTU Aqua and in 2012 he was appointed senior scientist.