Lucas Mentch uses CRC resources to explore the intersection of statistics and machine learning, creating models for a wide range of fields – ecology, criminal forensics, and sports analytics among them. One project worked with bird population data about the migration of tree swallows from the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology’s eBird project.

“eBird creates an amazing level of detail, so the migration presented many complex forms of local variation that contribute to a larger pattern,” Mentch explains. “The challenge was not only to build a model that produced accurate predictions, but also to develop testing procedures that would allow us to isolate the effects of individual variables.”

Tree swallow in flight (courtesy eBird)

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Is there life beyond Earth?

Orbiting Jupiter almost 400 million miles from Earth is the moon Europa.  Ice covers its entire surface and cracks in the ice are filled with a brown substance whose color matches salt samples bathed in the lab with Jupiter-intensity doses of radiation. Spectroscopic observations of Europa using the Hubble Space Telescope match the spectrum of the irradiated salts.The Galileo Jupiter probe and Hubble have detected plumes of water vapor erupting through Europa’s ice sheet.What’s under the ice? If a saltwater ocean, Europa possesses the essential ingredient of biological life. NASA plans to explore that ocean – and thanks to Center for Research Computing collaborator Matthew Barry and his team, the University of Pittsburgh is an integral partner in one of the most ambitious and potentially consequential space missions since the Apollo program.

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