About US: Meet our PhD Candidate
Tara Mackey is an Academic Researcher in the field of Water Resource and Environmental Management who has worked on numerous regional projects with various universities, non-profit organisations, municipal water utilities, and private companies.
In 2010, Ms Mackey earned her BSc. in Mathematics and Meteorology with First Class Honours from the University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus, Barbados. In 2013, she went on to pursue a MSc. specialisation in Water Resource Management receiving Distinction Honours from the Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES). Ms Mackey continued to develop her research and analytical skills by working as a Research Assistant at CERMES primarily focusing on two projects in the subject areas of water demand forecasting and climate change, and geo-spatial modelling of pipe bursts in a water distribution network.
Ms Mackey was awarded an AusAid Scholarship to expand the scope of her preliminary research in the form of postgraduate studies for the determining of factors that influence deterioration of the water pipe network and the implications of climate change. Ms Mackey’s research combines various types of data-driven analyses and data-mining techniques such as Self-Organising Maps and Evolutionary Polynomial Regression, and use of hydraulic modelling software, geographic information systems (GIS), and downscaled climate change projections. Ms Mackey’s PhD Research is being supervised by Dr Adrian Cashman (UWI), Dr Stephen Mounce (University of Sheffield – UoS), and Prof Joby Boxall (UoS).