David Borchers

Prof. David Borchers is a Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of St Andrews, UK, affiliated with the School of Mathematics and Statistics. He specializes in developing statistical methods for ecological applications, particularly in estimating wildlife population abundance, distribution, and dynamics using advanced survey techniques. His research integrates spatial capture-recapture, distance sampling, and hidden Markov models to address challenges in conservation and wildlife management.

Key research areas include spatial capture-recapture methods, acoustic and digital survey technologies, and ecological modeling of species such as snow leopards, gibbons, and marine mammals. He collaborates with global organizations like the Snow Leopard Trust and the Global Snow Leopard & Ecosystem Protection Program. His work emphasizes methodological innovation, such as improving detection probability estimates and addressing biases in survey data.

Borchers has supervised numerous PhD students and led projects funded by EPSRC and other grants. His contributions span theoretical statistics and applied ecology, with a focus on bridging gaps between data collection and ecological inference. Current projects include automated animal density estimation using AI and acoustic data, and the PAWS initiative for global snow leopard assessment.

He holds leadership roles in research units and has published extensively in journals like Biometrics, Methods in Ecology and Evolution, and Frontiers in Marine Science. His methodologies are widely adopted in conservation policy and wildlife management worldwide.