Jeff A. Tracey

Jeff A. Tracey, PhD, is a computational scientist and ecologist with extensive experience in artificial intelligence, scientific computing, and wildlife research. Jeff has a PhD in Ecology form Colorado State University, a MS in Biometry from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and a MS in Biology from University of California, San Diego. With over fourteen years of experience in the U.S. Geological Survey as an ecologist, biostatistician, and computational scientist, Jeff has expertise and experience in designing and implementing research projects involving biotelemetry, bioacoustics, and wildlife camera traps, analyzing data from diverse sources, building predictive models using deep learning techniques, and spatial modeling.  Dr. Tracey has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and reports. His past research has focused using agent-based and spatial modeling to study the effects of landscape fragmentation and urbanization on wildlife movement behavior, functional landscape connectivity, habitat selection, and wildlife disease dynamics. He has conducted field work including radiotelemetry of red diamond rattlesnakes, wildlife camera trapping, and GPS telemetry of Golden Eagles. He has also taught courses on ecological modeling, statistics, artificial intelligence, deep learning, and high-performance computing with R. Currently, his primary research interest is the application of deep learning to conservation and ecological research.