Brennen Fagan

I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate with LCAB and the Department of Mathematics studying the Mathematics of Biodiversity Change.

I received my undergraduate degree at California State University, Fresno with the Smittcamp Family Honors College and my PhD in Mathematics from the University of York on a departmental teaching studentship. My PhD studied historical war data with the York Historical Warfare Analysis Group to better understand human conflict.

Working with LCAB means interdisciplinary collaboration on global problems: how do we enhance biodiversity and prevent its loss? Being a part means seeing these problems from multiple perspectives and generating new insights.

My research leans towards applied computational mathematics, primarily simulations, dynamical systems, and data analysis. This has ranged from understanding historical decision-making through bootstraps and counterfactual analysis (collaboration with Dr Horwood and Dr Price, York St John) and understanding how the time series of war-level battle deaths has changed using changepoint analysis (Dr Knight, York) to studying the physics and robustness of coalescence and fragmentation systems (Dr Pushkin, York) during my PhD (Professor MacKay and Professor Wood).