My name is Fran and I studied the degree of Marine Sciences at the University of Alicante. During the career, subjects such as zoology, statistics and especially population ecology and conservation always caught my attention. For this reason I did the final degree project at the seals research and rehabilitation center SRRC Pieterburen (Netherlands).

In my opinion, statistics is the key tool by which scientists from all fields can do research. In 2017 I decided to study the Master’s degree in Biostatistics from the University of Valencia and I am currently at the Institute of Marine Research of Vigo (IIM-CSIC) doing an internship and the final master’s work in collaboration with the Spanish Oceanographical Institute (IEO). My project aim is to make a species distribution model (SDM) on European hake (Merluccius merluccius) by adjusting Bayesian spatial-temporal hierarchical models (B-HSTMs) with R-INLA.