Guiding CEFI’s mission & initiatives
The CEFI steering committee was instituted to help the network with the following goals:
To achieve these goals, the steering committee is formed by 5-10 members and has elections every two years. It aims to include representation from: graduate students and post-doctoral researchers (min. 2), government representatives (min. 2), industry & NGO (min. 2), and academics (remaining seats). All decisions are made by majority vote. The steering committee holds monthly meetings.
Members
2025-2027
Korryn Bodner
University of Guelph
Chair
Korryn is interested in combining near-term forecasting with One Health to predict and prevent the emergence and spread of infectious diseases that impact wildlife, domestic animals, and humans. She is also currently serving as an elected member of the Ecological Forecasting Initiative’s Steering Committee.
Carina Firkowski
Independent consultant
Co-chair & Website sub-committee
Carina is an ecologist interested in conservation and modeling applied to decision-making contexts. Her work focuses on modeling ecological connectivity and habitat prioritization in face of human induced land cover and climate change to inform management decisions.
Deepit Bhatia
Penn State University
Memberships sub-committee
Deepit is interested in bridging the gap between theoretical and applied epidemiology to understand how disease elimination can be achieved and maintained in the short- and long-term, particularly in vaccine-preventable diseases in humans and livestock.
Chris Brimacombe
University of Guelph
Communications sub-committee
Chris investigates species interaction networks, focusing on the ecological processes that determine why species interact in particular environments. He aims to apply forecasting techniques to these networks to evaluate their predictive performance and enhance our understanding of species interactions and community dynamics. By identifying and addressing biases in existing network models, Chris strives to improve their accuracy and utility, advancing ecological research.
Cole Brookson
Yale University
Communications sub-committee
Cole is interested in forecasting infectious disease dynamics in the context of climate change. He also is interested in using forecasting-based techniques to better understand the predictability of ecological systems generally.
Steve Cumming
Université Laval
Steve is an ecological modeler and statistical ecologist focussing on boreal ecosystem dynamics and management. He is involved in ecological forecasting studies in Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Ontario, Québec, and the Atlantic provinces.
Marie-Josée Fortin
University of Toronto
Memberships sub-committee
Marie-Josée is interested in predicting species dispersal and species interactions across spatial scales.
Josie Hughes
ECCC
Website sub-committee
Josie is a Research Scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada. She aims to improve the usefulness, reliability, transparency, and availability of tools for projecting changes in wildlife and vegetation.
Eliot McIntire
NRCan
Website sub-committee
Eliot is a Research Scientist with Natural Resources Canada and the Canadian Forest Service. He is the primary developer of the SpaDES metapackage for R and he teaches and uses this to help implement the PERFICT approach to applied ecology for decision making. He works on forecasting of a diversity of processes, including wildfire, forest insects, wildlife, and trees.
