Are you passionate about wildlife conservation and intrigued by the intersection of data science and ecology? Do you have a knack for developing cutting-edge algorithms and tools to analyze large volumes of wildlife camera-trapping data? Are you eager to contribute to the global effort of addressing the biodiversity crisis? If so, we have an exciting opportunity for you! The Wildlife Ecology and Conservation group (WEC) of Wageningen University studies how humans and the environment influence wildlife, using a wide variety approaches including wildlife camera trapping. WEC members run camera-trap surveys in many places across the globe, develop novel methods for camera trapping studies, and develop and manage the camera-trap data management platform
Agouti WEC is looking for a Postdoctoral Research Associate on Data Science for Wildlife Camera Trapping to work within the NWO-funded BIODIVERSA+ project “Big Picture”.
This collaborative project aims to support European, national, regional and stakeholder organisations’ efforts to conserve and manage biodiversity by enhancing their timely access to robust monitoring data for a wide set of species not currently covered by accessible monitoring data.
More specifically, the project aims to facilitate the use of large volumes of wildlife camera-trapping data from large spatial and temporal scales across Europe with the ultimate goal to help addressing the biodiversity crisis.
As postdoctoral fellow you will be part of the camera-trapping team of WEC. Your main roles will be to:
- develop and evaluate algorithms for automated classification of wildlife to the species level, that will facilitate image processing;
- develop tools for automated tracking and counting of animals across sequences of images, to inform density-estimation models;
- develop tools for the recognition of individual animals including behaviour from sequences of camera-trap images, to enrich camera-trap data;
- conduct research projects that demonstrate how enriched camera-trapping data can be used to answer questions in wildlife ecology, conservation and management, with publications in high-rated peer-reviewed journals.
You will work in the Lumen building at the Wageningen Campus in Wageningen, The Netherlands.
You will work here The research is embedded within the chair
Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, which is led by
Prof. dr. ir. Frank van Langevelde, within the camera-trap research team under supervision of
dr. ir. Patrick Jansen. WEC is working to understand how changing environments affect wildlife densities, distributions, and interactions. We study how humans influence wildlife by examining both direct mechanisms and mechanisms that are more indirect and that are part of larger-scale processes. While the group primarily addresses fundamental scientific challenges, it also contributes to the application of this knowledge to advance evidence-based wildlife conservation and other applied fields including agriculture, forestry, spatial land use planning, and public health. With its focus on wildlife ecology and conservation in both natural and human-dominated areas, the group is a key player in the field of ecology at WUR and contributes to sustainable use of our planet’s resources, one of the main goals of WUR.