Please note: This distinguished lecture will take place in DC 1302 and virtually over Zoom.
Tanya
Berger-Wolf
Director,
Translational
Data
Analytics
Institute
Professor,
Computer
Science
and
Engineering
|
Electrical
and
Computer
Engineering
|
Evolution,
Ecology,
and
Organismal
Biology
Director,
Imageomics
Institute
Ohio
State
University
Introducing
the
new
field
of
imageomics:
from
images
to
biological
traits
using
biology-structured
machine
learning.
Images
are
the
most
abundant,
readily
available
source
for
documenting
life
on
the
planet.
Coming
from
natural
history
collections,
laboratory
scans,
field
studies,
camera
traps,
wildlife
surveys,
autonomous
vehicles
on
the
land,
water,
and
in
the
air,
as
well
as
tourists’
cameras,
citizen
scientists’
platforms,
and
posts
on
social
media,
there
are
millions
of
images
of
living
organisms.
But
their
power
is
yet
to
be
harnessed
for
science
and
conservation.
Even
the
traits
of
organisms
cannot
be
readily
extracted
from
images.
The
analysis
of
traits,
the
integrated
products
of
genes
and
environment,
is
critical
for
biologists
to
predict
effects
of
environmental
change
or
genetic
manipulation
and
to
understand
the
significance
of
patterns
in
the
four
billion
year
evolutionary
history
of
life.
I
will
show
how
knowledge-guided
machine
learning
and
computer
vision
can
turn
massive
collections
of
images
into
high
resolution
information
database
about
living
organisms,
enabling
scientific
discovery,
conservation,
and
policy
decisions.
I
will
share
our
vision
of
the
new
scientific
field
of
imageomics.
As a computational ecologist, her research is at the unique intersection of computer science, wildlife biology, and social sciences. Berger-Wolf is also a director and co-founder of the conservation software non-profit Wild Me, home of the Wildbook project, which brings together computer vision, crowdsourcing, and conservation. Wildbook has been recently chosen by UNESCO as one of the top AI 100 projects worldwide supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It has been featured in media, including Forbes, The New York Times, CNN, National Geographic, The Economist. Berger-Wolf has given hundreds of talks about her work, including at TED/TEDx, UN/UNESCO AI for the Planet, and SXSW EDU.
Prior to coming to OSU in January 2020, Berger-Wolf was at the University of Illinois at Chicago (2005-2020). Berger-Wolf holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has received numerous awards for her research and mentoring, including University of Illinois Scholar, UIC Distinguished Researcher of the Year, US National Science Foundation CAREER, Association for Women in Science Chicago Innovator, and the UIC Mentor of the Year. She is the subject matter editor for the Ecosphere emergent technologies. Berger-Wolf is a member of the CNRS International Scientific Advisory Board, Artificial Intelligence for Science, Science for Artificial Intelligence (AISSA) Centre. She is an invited specialist for the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) AI on Biodiversity working group and served on the WWF working group on AI Collaboration to End Wildlife Trafficking (2018), AAAS-FBI Big Data in the Life Sciences and National Security Working Group (2013), the strategic planning task force on Animal Behavior (2013), as well as organizing and program committees for most AI and Data Science conferences, and the First U.S.-Africa Frontiers of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Symposium (2022).