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Just starting your conservation tech career path? Our Early Career group is the best place to network, chat about your master's projects, and seek advice from your peers and those who have been down this path before! Join now to get to know community members and students from around the world!

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Postdoctoral Associate - Remote Sensing & Unoccupied Aircraft Systems

David Johnston

10 August 2022 1:44pm

The Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing (MaRRS) Lab at Duke University seeks a highly motivated postdoctoral researcher to support the ongoing development of new and existing research and conservation programs, both internally and externally.

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discussion

Academia folks: what kind of tech training/exposure are you giving to your undergrads?

David Savage

12 July 2022 8:34pm

One of the things I've noticed in my work with some undergrads is that they're getting a pretty scattershot approach to learning about technology and its applications in...

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Carly Batist

13 July 2022 1:26pm

Pretty much all biostats classes in higher ed will be taught in R, you'd have to separately take a Python class. But even that would require the knowledge that you might need Python at all, which is not something I realized until far later in my career (in undergrad, it was what the computer science people took so how could it possibly be helpful for me yadda yadda). I say this too having been an undergrad right around when the big data revolution really took off, so I'm not sure what kind of curricular changes have been made following that. At my undergrad & Master's universities at least, there have not been any. One biostats course required for each, taught in R.

In terms of tech like hardware, ecology/conservation programs seem woefully under-focused on this. You can take a conservation class that might talk it about it for one lecture or a genetics class where you talk about eDNA, etc. but it doesn't seem as embedded into the overall curriculum as much as it should be. 

I of course am only speaking from my own experiences and those around me who have come from different universities. I know there are some universities doing it better, for example Andrew Schulz teaches a Conservation Tech class at Georgia Tech. Florida Tech has a Conservation Tech Master's program, as does Liverpool John Moore in the UK and Holland College in Canada. Pacific Union College also has a Conservation Tech concentration in their Bio department. 

There are also centres within universities that are focused on certain aspects of conservation tech - we have a bunch listed in the Conservation Tech Directory (you can filter by academia). 

David Savage

13 July 2022 8:21pm

I just had a conversation with a professor in my department who's had students doing RasPi-based camera traps as a project in a REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) program, which seems really cool. But unfortunately it's only getting that exposure for a relatively small portion of the total undergraduate student body. 

 

The other thing I wonder is if the ways that students are growing up in their relationship with tech is changing how we need to teach things. This article really challenged some of the things I've found most aggravating in teaching students things in R or ArcGIS https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z

Akiba

14 July 2022 1:26am

The title of that article is "File Not Found". That threw me off since I totally thought I hit a 404 and the article didn't exist anymore. It's super interesting though so don't get thrown off by the title.

Notable quote:
“Take their phones away and get ‘em on Windows 98.”

Also, that article makes me feel so oooooold....

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discussion

A Triphibian Surveillance Vehicle

Ayush Jamdar

9 July 2022 2:23pm

Hey all!I am Ayush, a core team member of my school's Robotics Club (Center For Innovation, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras). There is one project - The Triphibian - we are...

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discussion

Careers in Bioacoustics

Eric Snyder

9 June 2022 5:13pm

I'm a PhD student studying whale acoustics and am beginning to plan for the next step of my career after graduating. As a student I've met a lot of people who went on to academic...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

20 June 2022 6:02pm

Hi Eric, 

Dropping in a reply we had over on Linkedin here. Annoyingly I can't do a snazzy embed of the comment - will fix that!

Anton Baotic shared: 

I guess it depends on whether you want to stay in academia or go into industry. Overtime working hours are preprogrammed in academia without appropriate compensation. Austrian funding agencies pay a reasonable wage. I believe it could be improved.
I've always enjoyed working with exotic animals like elephants, giraffes, and giant pandas, as well as the collaborative and international work. This experience shaped me into the person I am today, and I don't want to missany of it. Personally, I believe that bioacoustics has not received the respect that it deserves, including the bioacousticians who put their lives into their projects. I am convinced that bioacoustics can be a valuable tool in conservation. Throughout my career, non-academics and the tech industry have approached me numerous times about using bioacoustics as a conservation monitoring tool. And I frequently feel stepped on when asked to provide material without appreciating the work behind the data, especially when it comes from economically-driven institutes that are unwilling to compensate. The fact is that the best conservation Technology is meaningless without solid basic data.
In retrospective, a more tech-oriented educational background would have been good!

Steph

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event

Wildlifetek's Summer School

Wildlifetek

8 June 2022 8:00pm

Are you a wildlife student or early career wildlife professional? Would you like to gain new knowledge and skills to help you move forward in your wildlife career? Would you like to learn how you can use technology to...

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discussion

Welcome!

Talia Speaker

23 April 2019 3:58pm

Welcome to the Early Career group. In a few sentences, please introduce yourself, your background, and your areas of interest. What brings you to the community? What are your...

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Rita Pucci

30 July 2021 10:47am

Hi everyone,

I am Rita Pucci from Italy but I am bouncing everywhere to follow my work. I am a Computer Science researcher, currently, at the University of Udine (north Italy).

My research is focused on building new machine learning models for computer vision, in particular for image classification and manipulation. I developed a machine learning model that used signals from sensors to identify tortoises behaviour and a model to classify species from camera traps in forests in India. I really loved working for conservation and I want to be involved again in the conservation field.

I joined this community because it seems to be a safe place to start connections with people from other research fields and get in touch with (maybe) people for collaboration.

I really want to contribute to this community as much as I can. 

Enjoy your time

Rita

Ileana Vico

29 April 2022 10:43am

Hi everyone!

I'm a recently graduated Industrial Designer, looking for some opportunities in wildlife conservation projects. I can offer knowledge in the industry and production processes, design and development of product alternatives, project management and decision-making. Feel free to message me for any inquiries!

Reece Rhinehart

18 May 2022 6:25am

Hello everyone! 

 

I am currently a senior undergraduate student working on landscape genetics research using RAD seq data and GIS data. The organism we've been studying is Rana aurora  the Northern Red Legged Frog. I'll be stating a new project this summer looking at how noise pollution affects learning and communication in birds. I come from a non technical background but I am extremely interested in applying machine learning and ai to the research I work on. 

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discussion

Open to pro Bono positions

Joyeeta

8 November 2021 12:54pm

Hi ! I am joy - based in London. I am a techie/hardware engineer /software engineer who became an entrepreneur. Over a period of 10 years I build and sold successfully 2...

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discussion

Seeking opportunities: Innovation manager with hands on skills in prototyping, data-science, product

Luigi

28 April 2021 9:53am

I am looking for career opportunities to align passion for tech with love for nature: I mean that I care about the conseguences of my working activities (including negative...

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Luigi

14 July 2021 9:50am

Thanks so much @skatewing 

It is impressive to notice that almost all are outside of EU, and my concern is the working rights to collaborate with US or UK organisations due to VISA constraints. To your knowledge:
- does companies in this space are keen on enrolling people that would require a working VISA ? 

Or

- can it be usual practice, in this space, to collaborate with people outside of USA or UK with freelancing contractual agreements, in order to ease out restrictions ?

In my opinion I thought that proposing myself as a contractor might have offered an administrative (aka, less costs) benefit for such companies, but experience with HR from UK and USA brought evidence they prefer people at least already resident in their Countries and with a VISA permit. 

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discussion

Wildlabs ML course group study

N P

3 March 2021 4:45am

Dear all, A study group is forming to collectively tackle the embedded machine learning course on Coursera: https://www.wildlabs.net/resources/news/intro-embedded-machine-...

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shiva

18 June 2021 11:44am

Hey Neelang,

Would love to join in on the Slack if you folks are still active. I'm thinking of taking up related courses as well.

Cheers.

NikkiA

19 June 2021 3:22am

Hi 

I'd be interested too, but as a very green newb would I be able to follow or would another group/course be more appropriate to establish some background first. 
cheers 

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discussion

Study group for online classes

N P

31 January 2021 5:33pm

Dear all, Please contact me or write here if you're interested in joining an online study group for free online classes (see this thread for the origin of our group). Our...

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Phuong Nguyen

17 February 2021 2:09am

Hi Neelang! I've just started some online courses and would love to join a study group. Please add me to the Slack channel. Thanks so much! :)

Anna

9 March 2021 5:06pm

Hi Neelang, 

I'm assuming you all have already started, but if it's not too late, I would love to join your group! Please let me know how I can join your Slack.

-Anna

N P

9 March 2021 6:15pm

Hi, anyone interested in joining: send me a message with your e-mail!

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