Jennifer Walker

PhD Studentship in learning in the deep: quantifying change in deep-sea benthic environments using images collected by AUVs

Hi, I'm Jennifer Walker and I am a Leverhulme Trust Doctoral scholar studying within the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute, University of Southampton.

My research combines machine learning with marine biology, allowing me to use the skills I learnt in my previous studies to automate the classification of deep sea species in images taken by Automated Underwater Vehicles. I'm hoping this will allow for more accurate monitoring of our global environment on a larger scale than is currently possible.

I'll be using machine learning techniques to help automate the classification and ongoing monitoring of deep-sea species in images collected by AUVs. My supervisors are Blair Thornton from the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment, Adam Prugel-Bennet from Electronics and Computer Science, and Henry Ruhl and Veerle Huvenne from the National Oceanography Centre.  I'm hoping my research will combine the three distinct fields of marine robotics, marine biology, and machine learning to improve the way we monitor the environment and our changing climate.