HumBug

Principal Investigators

Stephen Roberts is Professor of Machine Learning in the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford.

Stephen's main area of research lies in machine learning approaches to data analysis. He has particular interests in the development of machine learning theory for problems in time series analysis and decision theory. Current research applies Bayesian statistics, graphical models and information theory to diverse problem domains including astronomy, mathematical biology, finance and sensor networks. He leads the Machine Learning Research Group, is a Professorial Fellow of Somerville College and the director of the Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance.

Kathy Willis was appointed in November 2013 to lead Kew’s Science Directorate. Kathy is leading the development of a new science strategy for Kew, to focus and enhance its world-leading science and conservation work, strengthen its position as a global resource for plant and fungal knowledge.

Kathy’s research interests focus on the relationship between long-term vegetation dynamics and environmental change, with current projects examining biodiversity baselines and processes responsible for ecosystem thresholds and resilience. Recent work has also focused on the development of technologies to measure and derive economic and ecological values for biodiversity.

Projects in this area include the development of a web-based decision support tool to provide measure of ecological and biodiversity value of landscapes outside of protected areas that can be used by businesses to reconcile competing objectives of maximising financial gains and minimising ecological impacts.

Research Scientists

Marianne Sinka is a Senior Postdoctoral Researcher specialising in the bionomics and spatial distribution of insect vectors of infectious diseases. Marianne leads the group's work on vectors, including the Anopheles vectors that transmit malaria and vectors of the arboviruses.

Davide Zilli is a Research Scientist at Mind Foundry. He was a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the University of Oxford and a Junior Research Fellow at the Somerville College. His research interests lie in the acoustic monitoring of animal species and in the involvement of the general public in scientific research. He works full time on the project on smart devices and algorithms for the detection and classification of mosquitoes that carry malaria and similar diseases.

Yunpeng Li is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Machine Learning in the Department of Engineering Science and a Junior Research Fellow at the Wolfson College, both at the University of Oxford. His current research includes the development of multi-species detection algorithms and cost-sensitive classification strategy. He is in charge of the HumBug Zooniverse project.

Samuel Pironon is a Research Fellow at the Biodiversity Informatics and Spatial Analysis department of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. His research aims to understand and predict the structure and dynamics of species’ geographical distributions. He is in charge of species distribution modelling and spatial analyses for the HumBug Zooniverse project.

Doctoral Students

Ivan Kiskin is a DPhil candidate in the Machine Leaning research group and the AIMS Doctoral Training Centre, University of Oxford.

Oliver Bent, is studying for a PhD in Engineering, exploring how we can make better decisions in the control of Malaria, through applied Artificial Intelligence research. Prior to his PhD research, Oliver worked with IBM Research Africa on many mobile-based solutions to challenges in Education and Healthcare. He is incredibly excited to be part of the HumBug Zooniverse project, which poses a technology with the potential to completely change how we achieve global Malaria eradication.

Research Interns

Henry Chan is a Research Intern working on the deployment of detection algorithms on embedded devices.