Professional summary
Dr Tom August's research focuses on the application of new methods and technologies to biodiversity monitoring. His interests span the fields of ecology, computer science, engineering, and citizen science.
Tom started his career as a field ecologist studying the behavioural ecology of bats, and over subsequent decades has increasingly focused on how new technologies can improve the quality and quantity of biodiversity information we have available, as well as increasing access to these data. Tom has used high performance computing, drones, smartphone applications, computer vision and large language models to support his research into biodiversity monitoring.
Recent projects have focused on supporting citizen scientists to monitor the environment, creating tools to support stakeholder’s access to biodiversity information, developing large scale computing workflows to support long term national scale analysis, and the development of hardware systems to monitor insects, including computer vision tools for interpreting outputs.
Tom leads a diverse team of engineers, computer scientists and ecologists, working at the intersection of multiple fields to undertake interdisciplinary science that benefits nature conservation.
Tom places a high value on knowledge exchange activities and is involved in a number of national and international networks with ambitions to share and better our understanding of how technology can support our comprehension of the natural world. Tom currently chairs the COST Action network InsectAI which aims to grow and share knowledge in Europe on methods for imaging and identifying insects using novel sensors and AI techniques.