A warm welcome to UCSC graduate student Rafael Catoia who recently joined CBIOMES
by Helen Hill for CBIOMES
HH: In summary, what are your research interests?
RC: I’m excited about tailoring and developing statistical tools that tackle real-world problems. Apart from data visualization and modeling, I’ve become more interested in understanding marine microbial ecology and how the usage of statistics can help identify biologically and geographically cohesive Zooplankton communities.
HH: What is your role in Sangwon’s group? What are you going to be working on for CBIOMES?
RC: I’m currently an MS student who Sangwon advises. For my MS project, we are working on tailoring statistical methods to attain different groups of Zooplankton communities across the Pacific Ocean.
HH: What is your educational background?
RC: I obtained my BSc in Statistics from UFSCar – Brazil in 2017. After some years working in industry, I started my MS in Statistics at UC – Santa Cruz in 2022, where I later began to work with Prof. Hyun.
Story image: Rafael says “I’m basically a Cat person who enjoys food and music. In my spare time, I like to pretend that I’m a very creative home chef.”