Lena Scholz works on the statistics of counting animals that are underwater most of the time. A population estimate for a whale or a seal is built from sightings that are sparse, unevenly distributed and biased by weather, observer and platform. The number that comes out the other end carries a confidence interval that is often wider than anyone managing the population would like.
Her contribution has been on integrating data types that were previously analyzed separately: visual survey, passive acoustic detection and photographic identification of individuals. Each has a different blind spot, and combining them properly turns out to require more than averaging. Her 2024 framework for joint estimation is now used by two regional assessment programs.
Scholz directs the MS in Marine Mammal Science. She is candid with prospective students that the degree is a graduate program for a reason: it assumes a working command of population biology and statistics that a four-year degree is where you acquire. Students who write to her as high school applicants are usually pointed toward the BS in Marine Biology first, and a number of them arrive in her program four years later.
She teaches MBIO 310 Marine Mammal Biology and MBIO 520 Population Dynamics of Marine Mammals.