Rate My Professor Eldar Rakhimberdiev

Eldar Rakhimberdiev serves as Assistant Professor in Animal-Environment Interactions in the Department of Theoretical and Computational Ecology at the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, Faculty of Science, University of Amsterdam, a position he has held since September 2021. He earned his PhD in Zoology from Lomonosov Moscow State University in 2008 and his MSc in Zoology from the same university in 2003. His career trajectory includes a senior researcher role at Lomonosov Moscow State University's Department of Vertebrate Zoology since August 2008, postdoctoral research at Cornell University's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from 2010 to 2014 focusing on solar geolocation and breeding ecology, at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research's Department of Coastal Systems from 2012 to 2018 on seasonal survival and shorebird population ecology, and at the University of Groningen's Conservation Ecology Group from 2018 to 2021 working on black-tailed godwit conservation and animal sensing. At Amsterdam, he teaches courses including Simulation and Modelling and Analysis and Modelling Lab.

Rakhimberdiev's research centers on movement and population ecology, biostatistics, and conservation science, particularly the adaptation of migratory bird populations to environmental changes. He develops frameworks utilizing tracked birds as living sentinels for near real-time global environmental pressure detection, employing geospatial analysis, Bayesian and frequentist statistical modeling, and integration of biologging, satellite imagery, capture-recapture, and count data to uncover fitness trade-offs across annual cycles. Key publications encompass 'Fuelling conditions at staging sites can mitigate Arctic warming effects in a migratory bird' (Nature Communications, 2018), 'Body shrinkage due to Arctic warming reduces red knot fitness in tropical wintering range' (Science, 2016, van Gils et al.), 'FLightR: An R package for reconstructing animal paths from solar geolocation loggers' (Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 2017), 'Light-level geolocator analyses: A user’s guide' (Journal of Animal Ecology, 2020), and 'Global temperature homogenization can obliterate temporal isolation in migratory animals with potential loss of population structure' (Global Change Biology, 2024). His contributions advance climate impact understanding on migratory species and bolster data-driven conservation.