My name is Michael Culshaw-Maurer. I’m a data scientist at Metro Transit, the public transit agencies in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. I’m in the Transit Information department, where I focus on improving the quality of rider-facing data, particularly real-time bus and light rail departure predictions. I haven’t fully left the world of insect ecology, and do some consulting work on ecological data science projects, both independently and with EcoData Technology.
Before my current position, I was a postdoctoral researcher working with The Carpentries and CyVerse to improve computational and quantitative education for researchers across a wide range of fields. I also helped out with R help sessions at the University of Arizona, and I served on the UA Data Science Research and Training Steering Committee.
A behavioral ecologist by training, I received my PhD from the Graduate Group in Ecology at UC Davis, advised by Jay Rosenheim and Sebastian Schreiber, and supported by a USDA NIFA Predoctoral Fellowship. In grad school I was an Affiliate of the UC Davis Data Lab, co-coordinator of the Davis R Users Group, co-founder of the UC Davis Ecological Stats Support Group, and I taught the graduate level R for Data Analysis and Visualization in Science course. I also served as a Head Steward for the UC Student Workers Union.
I’m a hobbyist photographer, which serves as a nice creative outlet after a long day in the lab or office. You can check out some of my galleries on my photography page. I also enjoy playing racquetball and lacrosse, camping, canoeing, hiking, and thrift shopping.
You can contact me by email or follow me on Twitter, Github, or Instagram by following the links at the bottom of this page. You can also try carrier pigeon, message in a bottle, or yelling really loud, but these have proven less successful.