Yuying Zhang, PhD

Yuying Zhang is an Associate Professor at Florida International University. Yuying got her Ph.D. at the University of Maine and her research field is Fisheries Population Dynamics, which focuses on the changes in the abundance and structure of populations. Her Fisheries Ecosystem and Assessment Lab focuses on 1) developing realistic assessment models with uncertainty included, 2) analyzing alternative management strategy evaluation systems including simulation models, 3) standardizing data collection and data processing for fisheries assessment, and 4) conducting ecosystem models for the ecosystem-based stock assessment. In this project, the ecosystem models developed by Yuying’s team can be used to explore the relationships among species within the oceanic Gulf of Mexico, identifying the keystone species, studying the dynamics of communities, and understanding how the environmental changes, e.g., the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, affect pelagic and deep-sea organisms.