Thesis and Dissertation Advisors - Biology
VALRIE ANN GERARD
MA, PhD in Biology
- Science and medical editor and writer since 2001. Editing, copyediting, and writing of manuscripts, books, dissertations, grant proposals, etc. Topics range from ecology to epidemiology, from biochemistry to biomechanics, from environmental policy to paleontology, from natural products to swine nutrition. Focuses on organization, interpretation, and clear presentation of complex information.
- Past clients include professionals and students from Australia, China, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Thailand, Uganda, Venezuela, even the U.S.! Goals are successful completion of specific writing project, and helping clients improve their own writing skills for future projects.
- Val's own work includes more than fifty publications in ecology, botany, zoology, physiology, biochemistry, and mathematical modeling (see her publication list, below), and one million dollars worth of successful grant proposals .
- Over thirty years of teaching experience, including scientific writing courses. Served as advisor and/or mentor to many graduate and undergraduate students.
- Past experience as associate editor, editorial board member, and/or reviewer for over two dozen scientific journals, including Science, and government funding agencies.
KIM SEEFELD
Kim Seefeld, MS, M.Ed. spent ten years working in biomedical research laboratories collecting and analyzing data after finishing a BS in Cell Biology from Michigan State. She understands the difficulties in making sense of research data because she did it for a long time. After doing all that wet lab work she moved out of the lab, got a degree in computer science and worked as a software engineer. Her programming skills are in many languages, including Perl, SQL, VB, Java, and C/C++. She also taught programming in public school and at the college level. She authored Java Programming Fundamentals, a book about object oriented programming in Java because she likes to explain difficulty technical concepts to a non-technical audience.
Kim finished an MS degree in statistics and continued studies at the doctoral level. She is an expert in statistical programming, especially using R Software and SAS, and is the author of Statistics Using R with Biological Examples. For five years, she has taught college statistics (University of New Hampshire, NHCTC-Manchester) to students in various fields and has worked in statistical consulting at New England Medical Center.
Areas of expertise include: data presentation (including doing very complex and customized graphs), R programming, SAS programming, experimental design, statistical modeling (linear, nonlinear, hierarchical, logistic, survival), scientific programming, statistics using Excel, SQL queries, database setup/organization, multivariate analysis, Bayesian methods, nonparametric methods, and applications of statistics to genetics (microarray analysis, whole genome association studies).
