Ezra Kitson
- Please introduce yourself.
Ezra Kitson – Environmental Data Scientist.
- Tell us about your professional and academic career before becoming part of the BIOPOLE Community.
I did a PhD in environmental chemistry at the University of Edinburgh before I started working as an Environmental Data Scientist at UKCEH. During my PhD I specialised in high-resolution mass spectrometry and metataxonomic sequencing of peatland soils. I developed a strong interest in programming and working with in-situ sensor data. Working at UKCEH I have taken on a wide range of projects, from building a web portal which monitors sewage spills in the River Thames catchment, to conducting machine learning analysis on water chemistry data from Loch Leven. I am part of UKCEH’s Aquatic Ecosystems group, and I am based at the UKCEH Edinburgh site.
- What do you do within BIOPOLE?
I am part of Work Package 1 where I am conducting statistical analysis to look at the relationship between Arctic Oscillation and freshwater discharge from six major Arctic rivers. This involves combining gridded climate data from NOAA with freshwater discharge data from gauging stations monitored by the Arctic GRO initiative in statistical analysis pipelines. The overall aim of the work is to understand how future changes in Arctic Oscillation are likely to manifest in changes to Arctic freshwater discharge, and thus the nutrient input from rivers into the Arctic Ocean. I am currently writing the results of this work up as a scientific manuscript which I hope to submit this year!
- What have you enjoyed about BIOPOLE so far?
It has been great to be meet researchers from other institutions who are interested in solving similar data science problems to me. It’s also been an opportunity to learn more about Arctic and Antarctic research – it’s fascinating to see how fieldwork is done in these inhospitable environments. It makes me reflect that the long walks across Scottish peat bogs during my PhD weren’t so bad after all.
- Tell us about a skill or trait unique to you that you would like to share?
I am fluent in a few different programming languages: Python, C++, R, JavaScript and MATLAB. This comes in handy when contributing to work done by colleagues in different institutes with their own programming language preferences.