Statistics in Ocean Science: The Story of Dr. Koch
By Pasqua Ruggerio
Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pasqua Ruggiero is a student at Carnegie Mellon University pursuing her master's in Data Science. Her interests include interdisciplinary statistical research, social justice and challenging her world views. She currently lives in Pittsburgh with her rescue cat, Bumblebee.
When we think of the typical individual dedicating their life to the study of oceanography, we may picture a scuba diver exploring coral reefs in the Pacific, or a scientist on a ship directly measuring various water properties and observing sea creatures. For Dr. Andrey Koch though, this dream of studying oceanography looks a bit… different than what we may envision.
Dr. Koch began his journey into the realm of oceanography at a young age, similar to many other oceanography researchers. As a child, he was very interested in the wild - he would spend countless hours outside, backpacking and marvelling in the beauty of nature. Naturally, his love for the outdoors led him to enroll at St. Petersburg University, where he was admitted into the department of Geology, and pursued an intensive Mathematically and Physically focused degree in Oceanography.
He desired to travel on ships and to do his own field research, yet due to external circumstances was unable to do so. This did not stop him from continuing to pursue his study in Oceanography though, as he later became involved in the interdisciplinary research laboratory of a professor at his university who had PhDs in both Oceanography and Mathematics. Dr. Koch’s pursuit of this research changed the course of his academic interests, as he fell in love with Statistics. This was the true start of his journey into the interdisciplinary field of Data Science and Oceanography.
As a researcher in this lab, Dr. Koch determined the best way to reconstruct and predict sea level fields at any period in time - he utilized statistical methods to create a model that provided a description of sea level spatiotemporal variability. Not only was this project especially prestigious and had important implications in regards to the importance of various measurements in determining sea level increases, but it helped him immensely because the Statistical techniques he used continue to be prominently used among data scientists today.
After graduating from St. Petersburg University with his doctoral degree, Dr. Koch continued his journey to Oregon State University, where he became a professor in the School of Atmospheric Sciences. His research during his time at Oregon State was very unique, as it involved the study of small, remote coastal areas off the coast of Oregon. Utilizing an abundance of data collected from this region, he created a model that could make predictions of the energetic currents in any part of these coastal areas. This was a great feat, as the currents were quite variable, yet his model was able to make reliable predictions for periods of up to 24 hours.
Modeling energetic currents may not seem as versatile research, but there are many life changing applications of his research. For instance, Dr. Koch described an application of his model in regards to saving passengers in a shipwreck. By being able to predict the behavior of the currents, one could use his model to determine the optimal placement of an engineless raft from the ship that would allow the currents to propel the people on board to safety.
Not only has Dr. Koch made significant contributions to energetic current modeling methods, but he has also had vast contributions to Biological Oceanographical modeling. His final project as an Oceanographer consisted of modeling the distribution of Zooplankton and Phytoplankton in coastal Oregon. His techniques allowed him to observe certain patterns in these organisms' behavior and was used to determine areas of the ocean that contained less phytoplankton. This was a crucial discovery, as a smaller than usual phytoplankton population is detrimental to the ocean ecological system of Oregon because they are providers of oxygen. A lack of oxygen in these areas causes many fish to die out. Thus, by being able to use his algorithm to predict a possible region of hypoxin, utilizers of his tools would be able to perform preventative measures before a potential significant loss of fish populations were to occur.
Though this last accomplishment was the last stage in Dr. Koch’s involvement in the Oceanography community, he continues to do impactful work due to his passion for environmental sustainability. He currently works as a Data Scientist for a healthcare company, where he creates statistical models that perform early detection of abnormalities in prenatal babies. Additionally, he is a TA for Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Professional Development program, where he spends his time helping students learn the mathematical theory behind fundamental machine learning methods.
Yet, despite the current underutilization of his Oceanography knowledge, Dr. Koch does not plan to stop his study of Oceanography. He dreams of leveraging his Oceanography and Data Science knowledge to incorporate Oceanographical data to improve predictive models in various fields such as Finance. One example of a project he is interested in tackling is to incorporate Oceanography trends into models that predict housing prices, because, as we could expect, there would be various changes in housing prices and locations associated with migratory patterns due to global warming.
Given everything that Dr. Koch has accomplished and his dedication to the ocean, learning and data science, I am sure that he will be able to bring his unique perspective to many different industries and further improve their predictive methods to promote sustainability, social equity and help better lives.
Who knows-one day he may finally be able to get onto a ship and collect observations from the Pacific Ocean and create a revolution like his role model, Norwegian Oceanographer Fridtoj Nansen, did in 1893 when he travelled to the Arctic Circle. All we can be certain of is that there will be great breakthroughs made in the interdisciplinary fields of Data Science and Oceanography by this explorer.