Hi! I’m Steffi LaZerte, an independent biological consultant and R programmer, and part time Community Assistant at rOpenSci.
I provide services in R Package Development, R Workflows (including data management), R Shiny Apps, and R Workshops. If you are interested in any of these services, please feel free to contact me.
Services
R Package Development
I am the author of several R packages providing a variety of services from accessing historical weather data from Environment and Climate Change Canada’s website (weathercan) to accessing NatureCounts animal observations (naturecounts).
I also help update existing packages, from minor (e.g., rcaaqs) to major (e.g., motus, bbsBayes2, ARUtools) changes.
I take pride in developing R packages that are not only powerful but user-friendly, including informative errors, in-depth tutorials, and instructions. I also prioritize error checking and testing to ensure packages are robust.
R Workflows
I specialize in preparing data workflows for complex data sets used in the fields of environmental monitoring, conservation, ecology, behaviour, evolution, and other natural sciences (e.g., Aquifer Factsheets).
I combine these workflows with Quarto reports and websites as needed to ensure an open and reproducible record (e.g., Weather and Mosquitoes, Vulture Migration, Urban Stopovers and Motus tracks), or to produce dashboards or visualizations to support research studies (e.g., Interactive Maps of Urban Bird Diversity and Carbon Storage).
As a biologist specializing in behavioural ecology I also have the training to consider experimental and statistical protocols, biological relevance and other necessary considerations when preparing data for analysis.
R Shiny Apps
I help with the development of Shiny web apps using R by either creating new apps (e.g., bcaquiferdata, bcgwcat) or helping to update/upgrade existing ones (e.g., ccviR, fasstrshiny).
R Workshops
The power of R to manage and visualize data, to create reports, and perform reproducible statistics is immense. However, the learning curve is fairly steep to start out. I aim to help reduce this learning curve by explaining R in ways that make sense to non-programmers. I also help explain workflows and general best-practices. There is so much more to R than simply statistics. I run workshops on Dealing with Data in R, Introduction to Rmarkdown/Quarto for Reproducibility, and an introductory workshop to Figures in R.
Created with Quarto by Steffi LaZerte; Updated 2025-08-05