Schick is a MASTS Senior Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews. Currently he works in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling. After receiving his MEM from the Nicholas School in 2002, Schick held positions at the New England Aquarium in Boston, Mass., and NOAA-Fisheries in Santa Cruz, Calif., where he led a team of researchers using GIS to map out historic habitat and connectivity of endangered salmonids. Together with Steve Lindley (PhD Duke University, 1994), Schick’s work on historical connectivity received an honorable mention for the Southwood Prize from the British Ecological Society in 2007.

Schick returned to the Nicholas School in 2005 to pursue a PhD with Professor Pat Halpin in the University Program in Ecology. After graduation in 2009, Schick held postdocs with Halpin, then with Nicholas Professor Jim Clark, and with Dr Len Thomas at the University of St Andrews. Part of Schick’s dissertation research was instrumental in the creation of new Federal critical habitat rules for the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale.

Currently Schick holds an independent fellowship at CREEM and works on three different projects:

• modeling health and disturbance in right whales (funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research);
• estimating body condition of harbour seals in Loch Fleet NNR, Scotland (see pictures – funding provided by the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland);
• and recording and modeling smoking behaviour in humans. This project is funded by the UK’s National Health Service, the Scottish Government, and the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

For more about Robert read the Spring 2016 Dukenvironment feature.