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[I last updated this page on 16 September 2021]
I’m impressed by just how much an inertial sensor (e.g. accelerometer) attached to an animal can reveal about that animal’s behaviour. Sensors coupled with appropriate data processing algorithms become ‘virtual eyes’ that offer us – sedentary, urban humans – crucial, precious glimpses into the hidden lives of wild animals.
During my PhD (done at EPFL in collaboration with PopEcol) I developed one such virtual eye using data collected on meerkats; it consisted of new methods to process accelerometer data to recognise coarse- and fine-scale behaviour. Peering through this eye, we discovered that females of different body mass adopt different foraging strategies, probably to avoid costly squabbles over food (fights increase stress, chronic stress leads to infertility). I find it quite remarkable how a ‘blind’ accelerometer supplemented with ‘cold’ algorithms was able to unearth such a complex link between foraging, social dynamics, and reproduction.
I now want to try to see further with this virtual eye – can it tell us something about an animal’s internal state? I will investigate this using accelerometer data collected on meerkats and African wild dogs.
CV
- 2021–present, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Marine Behavioural Ecology Group, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
- 2020–2021, Forschungskredit postdoctoral researcher, Population Ecology Group, Universität Zürich, Switzerland
- 2015–2020, PhD in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, Laboratory of Movement Analysis and Measurement, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
- 2013–2015, MSc in Bioengineering (with minor in Biomedical Technologies), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
- 2012–2013, Research Assistant, Microfluidics Laboratory, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India
- 2008–2012, BTech (Hons) in Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India