I'm a wildlife biologist, data scientist and web developer based in Bristol, UK, with an interest in animal movement, spatial data visualisation, and nature conservation
- Data Analyst, Proforest, UK (2022 - present)
- Honorary Research Fellow, University of Bristol, UK (2019 - 2022)
- Wildlife Data Analyst, Internet of Elephants, Kenya (2016 - 2021)
- Postdoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama (2015 - 2016)
- Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Porto, Portugal (2013 - 2014)
- PhD in Zoology, University of Cambridge, UK (2012)
I've always been fascinated by how animals move in their environment and have been lucky to study this from ocelots to meerkats, across the rainforest and desert. I developed a love of being in the field, while studying Biology and tracking ocelots on a forested island in Panama - my country of birth. I then worked in the Peruvian Amazon tracking white-lipped peccaries, before pursuing my PhD studies on meerkat dispersal and cooperation in the South African Kalahari Desert, followed by postdoctoral research on breeding patterns of sociable weavers, and foraging movement patterns of tropical primates and carnivores.
Over the 12 years studying how animal movement is influenced by social and environmental factors, I became particularly interested in the way technological advances - in GPS tags, camera traps, etc. - were being harnessed to gain insights on animal behaviour and ecology. I also realised how important it is for these findings to be made accessible not just to other researchers but to everyone beyond scientific circles. This shifted my focus from collecting wildlife data myself, to collating the experiences and data of other researchers, and translating this wealth of information into games and visualisations - an aim I helped pursue for 5 years at Internet of Elephants.
I'm now applying this expertise analysing data to help tackle broader environmental and social issues at Proforest, a non-profit organisation supporting the transition to responsible production and sourcing of agricultural and forest commodities.
I use R and QGIS for statistical and spatial data analyses, Power BI for visualising data and creating reports, and JavaScript libraries like Mapbox GL JS, deck.gl and React for web development.
Below, links to some of my work as a developer (you can view the code on GitHub).
At Internet of Elephants, I processed the underlying spatial and wildlife data - from GPS tags and camera traps, for example - for the games and visualisations we created. Recent releases, such as Wildeverse and Unseen Empire, were featured in The Guardian, TechCrunch, National Geographic, and CNN.
I've also written about the value of using wildlife data and storytelling for public engagement in conservation, for example, in Scientific American and for The Luc Hoffmann Institute.
With a background in behavioural ecology, I've also published several scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, based on my own research, including work on cooperation and dispersal in meerkats, and breeding decisions in sociable weavers. You can find a full list of my scientific publications on Google Scholar.
