Laura Marshall

Laura Marshall is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Research into Ecological & Environmental Modelling (CREEM), School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews. Her research focuses on statistical methods for ecological monitoring, particularly in marine environments. She contributes to advancing distance sampling techniques and assessing the impact of anthropogenic noise on marine mammals.

Research Interests: Her work spans distance sampling, abundance estimation, statistical ecology, and environmental risk assessment, with applications in marine conservation. She develops robust methodologies to improve population assessments under uncertainty and integrates diverse data sources such as aerial surveys and passive acoustics.

The recent publication trends show a strong emphasis on improving statistical rigor in ecological surveys, developing open-access tools (e.g., R packages), and translating scientific findings into policy through risk modeling and mitigation frameworks—particularly regarding underwater noise pollution.

• Pooling robustness in distance sampling: avoiding bias when there is unmodelled heterogeneity (2023)
• Distance sampling in R (2019)
• A simulation approach to assessing environmental risk of sound exposure to marine mammals (2017)

Scientific Awards: No awards are listed in the provided text.

Advising and Grants: Laura Marshall served as a Co-Investigator on the EPSRC-funded project "Ensuring ongoing impact of distance sampling methods and software for wildlife population assessment" (2023–2024). While no formal advisees are listed, her PhD was supervised by experts in ecology and statistics, indicating strong mentorship experience. She has contributed to commissioned reports for the Scottish Government, demonstrating applied research impact.

Labs and Teams: She is an active member of CREEM, a leading interdisciplinary research group specializing in ecological and environmental modeling. The center promotes collaboration across statistics, ecology, and policy, and supports public engagement initiatives such as Explorathon, in which Dr. Marshall participated in 2018.