I usually start my first lecture with the following slide of me working with my kids in my arms 🙂
Students sometimes perceive a large social/emotional/intelectual … gap between them and their teachers. However, I doubt that this gap should exist nor that it is beneficial to your learning. For example, such a gap will make it less likely that you ask questions during lecture or that you stay after the lecture to interact with me, and that’s a pitty. I hope to close this cap with these pictures of me as a human person.
In light of that, please call me Jürg, no Dr. no Professor, no surname etc. For Geman speaking students, ihr dürft mich gerne dutzen und ich werde euch dutzen. This obviously also applies to all prospective students
Bachelor, Master and PhD Students
If you are interested in collaborrating, please contact me. I’d be delighted into getting to know you and discuss what motivates you. If you already have an idea on what you’d like to research great, if you don’t we can discuss what you are interessted in together.
Most of my research revolves around understanding why species coexist in simple and more complex community models. Generally I’m more interested in general understanding than in specific details of any specific species. For more information please see research interests and my recent publications. The publications may be a bit hard to read, but most of them come with a twitter feed with simple explanations of the main findings. If those seem interesting to you, I’d be glad to get in touch with you.
Almost all of my research involves the mathematics or simulations and chances are high that you will have to do one or both while collaborating with me. I don’t really mind about the programming language, but R or Python would be best.
Courses
I currently teach at the RPTU, courses in Master Umweltwissenschaften, Ecotoxicology and Bachelor Umweltwissenschaften. If you have questions about any of my courses please do not hesitate to contact me. The lecture notes can generally be found on OLAT. My courses are
- Modellierungen in den Umweltwissenschaften (MSI 2c, Summer semester)
- Environmental modelling 2 (MOD 1b, summer semester)
- Modelling human-environment interactions (GEO 1b, summer semester)
- Effect and Exposure Modelling (with external lecturers, ETX 8a and 8b, winter semester)
- Tools for univariate and multivariate data analysis (B2/ETX3a and B2/ETX3b)
Jurg W. Spaak 