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The Team
Astro-ecology team
To develop a fully autonomous animal detecting drone system expertise from multiple disciplines is needed. The astro-ecology team is made up of astrophysicists, conservationists, computer scientists and engineers. We are mainly based at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK and collaborate with conservationists in the field all over the world.
Zoo keepers
Ross McWhirter
A machine learning wizard who crunches data for breakfast. Ross is leading on training our machine learning algorithms to recognize different species of animals.
Claire Burke
An astrophysicist turned climate scientist turned wannabe wildlife photographer. Claire figures out how the environment an animal lives in affects our ability to see it from the drone, and spends a lot of time analysing the thermal data gathered.
Josh Veitch-Michealis
General tech genius who makes the software, thermal cameras and drones talk to each other. Josh spends most of his time figuring out how to make a fully automatic animal finding system work whilst the drone is flying.
Other team members
Serge Wich - conservationist extraordinaire and silverback primatologist.
Steve Longmore - astronomer and ideas guy.
Owen McAree - drone master and likely cause of the robot uprising.
Maisie Rashman - expert thermographer and camera ninja.
Our conservation partners
WWF
Endangered Wildlife Trust
Wetlands Wildlife Trust
Knowsley Safari
Chester Zoo
National Geographic Explorers program
Visit our astro-eco page
Visit LJMU's drone research group page
