The exam marking is over, and a glorious Cambridge summer awaits! This year, we have a sizeable cohort of undergraduate and graduate interns joining us from next week. This note serves as a point of coordination to keep track of what's going on, and I'll update it as we get ourselves organised.
Every ten years, the city of Aarhus throws a giant conference to discuss new agendas for critical action and theory in computing.
Apple made a notable announcement in WWDC 2025 that they've got a new containerisation framework in the new Tahoe beta. This took me right back to the early Docker for Mac days in 2016 when we announced the first mainstream use of the hypervisor framework, so I couldn't resist taking a quick peek under the hood.
I stayed on for a few days extra in Washington DC after the biodiversity extravaganza to attend a workshop at legendary National Geographic Basecamp.
Habitat mapping of the Cairngormes Connect restoration area This is an idea proposed in 2025 as a good starter project, and is currently being worked on by Isabel Mansley. It is co-supervised with David Coomes and Aland Chan.
ZFS replication strategies with encryption This is an idea proposed in 2025 as a good starter project, and is currently being worked on by Becky Terefe-Zenebe. It is co-supervised with Mark Elvers. We are using ZFS in much of our Planetary Computing infrastructure due to its ease of remote replication. Therefore, its performance characteristics when used as a local filesystem are particularly interesting.
Mapping urban and rural British hedgehogs This is an idea proposed in 2025 as a good starter project, and is currently being worked on by Gabriel Mahler. It is co-supervised with Silviu Petrovan. The National Hedgehog Monitoring Programme aims to provide robust population estimates for the beloved hedgehog. The People's Trust for Endangered Species has been coordinating the programme.
Low power audio transcription with Whisper This is an idea proposed in 2025 as a good starter project, and is currently being worked on by Dan Kvit. It is co-supervised with Josh Millar. The rise of batteryless energy-harvesting platforms could enable ultra-low-power, long-term, maintenance-free deployments of sensors.
Validating predictions with ranger insights to enhance anti-poaching patrol strategies in protected areas This is an idea proposed in 2025 as a good starter project, and is currently being worked on by Hannah McLoone. It is co-supervised with Charles Emogor and Rob Fletcher. Biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate, underscoring the critical role of protected areas (PAs) in conserving threatened species and ecosystems.
Evaluating a human-in-the-loop AI framework to improve inclusion criteria for evidence synthesis This is an idea proposed in 2025 as a good starter project, and is available for being worked on. It may be co-supervised with Alec Christie and Sadiq Jaffer.
Evaluating LLMs for providing evidence-based information on conservation actions This is an idea proposed in 2025 as a good starter project, and is currently being worked on by Radhika Agrawal. It is co-supervised with Alec Christie and Sadiq Jaffer. We are building a Conservation Co-Pilot to improve worldwide conservation action through evidence-driven insights.