Andreas Ali amantik_at_ucla_dot_edu

Andreas Ali is currently a Ph.D. graduate student at UCLA Electrical Engineering Department under advisory of Professor Kung Yao. His research interest is in distributed passive wideband source localization, tracking and in the implementations thereof. Related tracking area includes non-linear filtering such as particle filtering and random set theory such as FISST. He is also currently participating with Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) group directed by Deborah Estrin, beginning from June 2005. He received my M.S. and B.S also from UCLA on December 2004 and June 2003 respectively.

Daniel T. Blumstein marmots_at_ucla_dot_edu

Dan Blumstein received his BA in Environmental, Population, Organismic Biology (Magna Cum Laude) and Environmental Conservation (Cum Laude) in 1986 at the University of Colorado Boulder, and his MS (1990) and PhD (1994) in Animal Behavior at the University of California, Davis. He is currently an Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA and is affiliated with CENS. He studies animal communication, social behavior and antitpredator behavior and his research integrates behavior and conservation biology. He also develops technology to help study behavior (www.jwatcher.ucla.edu). Blumstein is a co-PI on the NSF-supported Vox-Net project which aims to develop low-cost microphone arrays and relatively easy-to-use software to enable field biologists and conservation biologists to harnass the power of microphone arrays.

John Burt quill_at_u_dot_washington_dot_edu

John Burt is interested in complex culturally derived communication systems. His primary research goal is determining the function of such systems, how they arise culturally and evolutionarily, and how ecological and social factors define their structure. In recent years his research has addressed three related questions using bird song as a model, the first being: what is the function of the various song-based signals that territorial songbirds use? The second question is: what are the ecological and social factors that affect song learning, and what strategies are used during song learning to maximize the effectiveness of songs as signals? A final question is: how do individuals within a culturally derived communication system adapt to different environmental effects on their learning? His research to date has shown that ecological and social factors play an enormous and yet barely examined role in the development of complex communication systems, and that this line of research may give us new information about the evolution and function of these systems. He has developed bioacoustic software and hardware to study commuincation and social behavior.

Chih-Kia Chen chihkai_at_ucla_dot_edu

Chih-Kia is a Ph.D. student in Kung Yao's lab at UCLA.

Christopher W. Clark cwc2_at_cornell_dot_edu

Dr. Christopher W. Clark is the I. P. Johnson Director of the Bioacoustics Research Program at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and Senior Scientist in the Department of Neurobiology & Behavior at Cornell University. He holds advanced degrees in electrical engineering (M.S.E.E., SUNY-Stony Brook, 1974) and biology (Ph.D., SUNY -Stony Brook, 1980). His doctoral research concentrated on acoustic communication in southern right whales. Dr. Clark became was an NIH postdoctoral fellow and an assistant professor at The Rockefeller University where he conducted research on vocal learning in songbirds. Dr. Clark’s research concentrates on animal acoustic communication with a particular focus on the development and application of advanced acoustic methods for scientific conservation of endangered species. He leads the Bioacoustics Research Program in the design, development and application of computer-based systems for quantitative analysis of animal vocalizations, and acoustic techniques to detect, locate, track and census free-ranging animals. Scientists and engineers in the Bioacoustics Research Program (see www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/) conduct a multitude of basic scientific and applied research projects around the globe (Africa, Australia, Europe, North America, Central America, South America; Arctic, Atlantic, Pacific, and Southern Oceans) on a diversity of species and taxonomic groups. These efforts are directed at understanding the hows and whys of animal acoustic communication, often with a special focus on determining the impacts of human noise-generating activities on individuals and populations over various spatial and temporal scales.

Patrick Clemins patrick_at_clemins_dot_name

Travis Collier travcollier_at_gmail_dot_com

Travis Collier is a Ph.D. student in Chuck Taylor's lab.

Kathryn Cortopassi kac53_at_cornell_edu

Kathryn Cortopassi received her Ph.D. in bioengineering from the joint graduate group of the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, San Francisco, and her B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests lay at this interdisciplinary interface, with an emphasis on what the application of basic engineering principles and approaches can bring to the study and understanding of animal sensory systems, communication, and bioacoustics. Dr. Cortopassi's graduate work explored the evolutionary forces sculpting signal processing in the vertebrate inner ear, and her postdoctoral work examined vocal diversity and communication in a neotropical parakeet. Her current work at Cornell University focuses on the development and application of algorithms and software for quantitative sound analysis, including signal detection, localization, feature extraction, comparison and classification.

Jill Deppe Jldeppe_at_yahoo_dot_com

Deborah Estrin destrin_at_cs_dot_ucla_dot_edu

Deborah Estrin (Ph.D. MIT, 1985; BSEE UCB, 1980) is a Professor of Computer Science, holds the Jon Postel Chair in Computer Networks, and is Founding Director of the National Science Foundation funded Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS). CENS’ mission is to explore and develop innovative, end-to-end, distributed sensing systems, from ecosystems to human systems. Estrin’s earlier work addressed Internet protocol design and scaling, in particular, inter-domain and multicast routing. Since the late 90’s her work has focused on multi-disciplinary, experimental-systems research as applied to a variety of environmental monitoring challenges. Most recently this work includes participatory-sensing systems, at the personal and community level, leveraging the location, acoustic, image, and attached-sensor data streams increasingly available from mobile phones. Estrin chaired a 1998 DARPA/ISAT study on sensor networks and a 2001 NRC study on Networked Embedded Computing which produced the report Embedded Everywhere. She served as a founding member of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Advisory board, and is currently a member of the NRC Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB), and TTI/Vanguard. Estrin was selected as the first ACM-W Athena Lecturer in 2006, was awarded the Anita Borg Institute’s Women of Vision Award for Innovation in 2007, and was inducted as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.

Stuart Gage gages_at_msu_dot_edu

Stuart Gage is a Professor in the Department of Entomology at Michigan State University. He holds adjunct appointments in the Zoology Department as well as at Queensland University of Technology. He received his BS (1968) in Entomology at North Dakota State University, and his MS (1972) and PhD (1974) at Michigan State University (in Entomology and Systems Ecology). He is director of the Computational Ecology and Visualization Laboratory (www.cevl.msu.edu) which focuses on large scale ecological analysis and synthesis of long time series of biophysical processes. Gage is currently collaborating with Director/Professor Peter Grace in the Institute of Sustainable Resources and Paul Roe e-Commerce, Queensland University of Technology on sensors and sensor cyber-infrastructure. QUT and MSU are co-developing new sensor technologies to monitor ecological health in complex ecosystems. In 2004 and 2006 Gage was invited as Visiting Scholar, Department of Primary Industries in Victoria, Australia to develop new approaches to research, including use of acoustics to sense environmental change.

Lewis Girod girod_at_nms_dot_lcs_dot_mit_dot_edu

Lewis Girod is a postdoctoral associate at MIT. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 2005 working under Deborah Estrin. His dissertation developed the hardware and software for bioacoustic monitoring. His current postdoctoral research focuses on developing systems for processing bioacoustic information.

Sean Hanser sfhanser_at_ucdavis_dot_edu

Sean F. Hanser received his BA (1991) in Marine Biology from University of California, Santa Cruz. He is currently finalizing his doctoral dissertation in Ecology at University of California, Davis under his major professor, Dr. Brenda McCowan. The subject of his research is the acoustic ecology and social networks of social foraging humpback whales in Southeast Alaska. Driven by a focus on understanding the broad principles that govern the structure and function of communication systems, Hanser has developed an expertise in cetacean behavior and communication, pattern recognition, information theory, and bioacoustics. Hanser seeks to apply an understanding of the principles of communication to wildlife conservation and management, particularly in the area of understanding the effects of anthropogenic noise on animal communication behavior.

Zac Harlow

Zac Harlow is a graduate student in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA in Chuck Taylor's lab.

Stacie Hopper slhooper_at_ucdavis_dot_edu

Stacie Hopper is a Ph.D. candidate at UC Davis. Her research involves both exploring the use of bioacoustics as a conservation and management tool, the impacts of noise on communication and the ability of species to compensate for these impacts. Individual, age and sex-related variation in acoustic structure of vocalizations has been shown in a large variety of species. Because of this bioacoustics has great potential to be used to track and monitor individuals and populations. Additionally, the traits that contribute to this variation are often polygenic, and therefore it may be possible to use acoustic diversity among individuals as a surrogate measure of genetic diversity in a population. Noise also has great potential to interfere with communication which in turn may affect survival, reproductive success, and population dynamics. While the behavioral responses of animals to noise and the physiological impacts of exposure to dangerous noise levels have been well explored, little work has been done as yet on how noise exposure affects signal production and structure. Even less work has been done investigating the ways in which animals may be able to compensate for noise interference on immediate, ontogenetic, and evolutionary time scales. She is investigating these issues using Belding’s ground squirrels and golden-mantled ground squirrels as models. In addition to this research she is interested in the relationship between communication system complexity and social system complexity, as well as the relationship between vocal structure and function in communication systems.

Ralph Hudson ralph_at_ucla_dot_edu

Ralph Hudson received his Ph. D. in optimal estimation and control from U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. He served as a Lieutenant Commander defining requirements, evaluating proposals and accelerating acquisition of electronic warfare systems at the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command, and later was a Chief Scientist at Hughes Aircraft Company (1973-1993) designing air to ground radar systems. Since 1993, he has been a Research Engineer at UCLA performing research in signal processing and sensor arrays.

Eric Kasten kasten_at_msu_dot_edu

Eric P. Kasten received the BS degree in mathematics and computer science from Central Michigan University in 1989, the MS degree in computer science from Michigan State University in 1997, and PhD degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Michigan State University in 2007. Dr. Kasten is currently a senior research associate with the Computational Ecology and Visualization Laboratory and the Remote Environmental Assessment Laboratory both at Michigan State University. Dr. Kasten conducts research in remote sensing using acoustics, time series data processing, and dynamically adaptive computing systems. He has 9 years of experience in developing software for real-time data acquisition and data stream processing for scientific applications, and more that 15 years of experience designing and deploying computer systems and networks. His current research interests include autonomic computing, dynamic system adaptation, and data stream processing and mining in support of ecosensing and adaptive mobile computing.

Alex Kirschel kirschel_at_ucla_dot_edu

Alex Kirchel's Ph.D. work examined the role of animal communication in evolutionary diversification and the structuring of ecological communities. Working with Daniel T. Blumstein and Thomas B. Smith, he used birds as a study system to test the relative effects of environmental gradients, competition and geographic isolation on divergence in bird song in African rainforest species. In Pogoniulus tinkerbirds, he compared song variation to morphological divergence and genetic differentiation to determine the factors leading to character displacement in related species. He also worked on song variation at the level of the individual and the community. With Charles E. Taylor and Martin L. Cody, he explored individuality in antbirds in a Mexican rainforest and how individuals interacted vocally with each other intra- and interspecifically. As part of this project, he was involved in the design and implementation of a system for the automated detection, identification and localization of birds using sensor arrays.

Alan Krakauer ahkrakauer_at_ucdavis_dot_edu

Alan Krakauer is broadly interested in behavioral and evolutionary questions, particularly related to the mechanistic, developmental, and evolutionary factors that shape avian social systems. His dissertation research focused on the mating system of the wild turkey, and understanding how subordinate males benefit from cooperative partnerships with other males. He used molecular measures of relatedness and paternity to show that kin selection can explain this apparently altruistic behavior; current direct and future direct benefits seem unlikely to account for the evolution of cooperative male courtship in this species. I also investigated how brood parasitism and spatial patterns of parentage determine offspring relatedness, and then how this could influence the ways in which these coalitions of relatives might form. He also used an opportunity for selection approach to examine how sexual selection may operate on various components of fitness in lek-like systems. His current postdoctoral project investigates sexual signaling in greater sage-grouse. Sage-grouse are a lekking species in which females seem free to choose amongst many males to obtain optimal genes for their offspring. He and collaborators are asking three basic questions: 1) what signals are females using to assess male quality, 2) what can males do to optimize the signal sent to females, and 3) how do environmentally-mediated changes in sound propagation influence male mating success. Their focus is on the evolution of plasticity in courtship displays, is plasticity itself under directional sexual selection, in what ways do males vary in their responsiveness to changing courtship conditions, and what might constrain plasticity in this context. They are also investigating the mechanisms of sound production in this species.

Brenda McCowan bjmccowan_at_ucdavis_dot_edu

Brenda McCowan received her BS (1985) in Animal Physiology from Cornell University and her PhD (1994) in Biological Anthropology from Harvard University. She is currently an Associate Professor of Applied Ethology with the School of Veterinary Medicine and the California National Primate Research Center at the University of California at Davis. Building on principles of evolution, animal behavior, and communication, Dr. McCowan’s interests are in applying current understanding of animal behavior and bioacoustics to animal welfare, management and conservation issues. Applied research includes the use of bioacoustics as a conservation and management tool, effects of anthropogenic noise on wildlife behavior and communication, and the use of social network analysis and dynamic network modeling as a management tool for captive exotics, wildlife, laboratory animals and domesticated species. Basic research focuses on the relationship between social and communication complexity in nonhuman animals.

Dan Mennill dmennill_at_uwindsor_dot_ca

Dan Mennill's research focuses on the ecology and evolution of communication and mating systems of wild animals, especially birds. He and his students study the interaction between avian communication and reproductive strategies, and the influence of natural selection and sexual selection on vocal behaviour and mating behaviour. He is a field biologist; he and his students combine their laboratory-based research with an intensive field-based approach to study the behavioural ecology of animals in their natural environment. Together with a variety of colaborators, he maintains ongoing studies of chickadees and warblers in Ontario; owls and woodpeckers in the United States; wrens, manakins, and antbirds in Costa Rica, and a critically-endangered wren in Colombia. In the field, he uses a variety of innovative techniques to study avian mating systems and communication systems. He uses interactive playback and multi-channel playback to investigate animal communication strategies and the evolution of animal signals. He uses long-term remote recordings as a passive strategy for monitoring the behaviour and ecology of rare and endangered birds. He has helped pioneer the development of an Acoustic Location System (ALS) capable of triangulating the position of free-living animals based on the sounds they produce. Presently, he is using ALS technology to study the ecology of vocal duetting behaviour in tropical birds in Costa Rica and the evolution of communication networks in temperate birds in Canada. On campus at the University of Windsor, he runs Canada's largest and most comprehensive laboratory devoted to the study of animal sounds. His laboratory includes a digital library of over 40 terrabytes of recordings of animal sounds from North, Central, and South America. He has seven sound analysis stations running state-of-the-art sound analysis software that he and his students use to analyze field recordings.

Jim Omura jimomura_at_gmail_dot_com

Jim K. Omura was born on 8 September 1940 in San Jose, California. He obtained B.S. (1962) and M.S. (1963) degrees from MIT and a Ph.D. (1966) degree from Stanford, all in Electrical Engineering. After three years with the Stanford Research Institute, Dr. Omura joined the engineering faculty at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1969. His early academic work was on theoretical performance bounds in Information Theory and the application of mathematical programming techniques to Communication Systems. In 1978 he co-authored the textbook Principles of Digital Communication and Coding with Andrew Viterbi (co-founder of Qualcomm in 1985). Dr. Omura also worked on optimal designs of Communication Systems with emphasis on Spread Spectrum Communication Systems. Together with Marvin Simon, Barry Levitt, and Robert Scholtz, Dr. Omura co-authored the three volume books titled Spread Spectrum Communications Handbook in 1985. During his academic career he published over 100 technical papers and became an IEEE Fellow in 1981. In 1984 Dr. Omura co-founded Cylink Corporation in Sunnyvale, California. Cylink became a leading supplier of commercial data encryption systems for enterprise networks. Serving as Chairman and CTO of Cylink, Dr. Omura and his engineering team developed the first 1024-bit public-key commercial encryption chip. Dr. Omura also designed some of the first commercial spread spectrum data radios for wireless metropolitan area networks using the unlicensed ISM bands. This Cylink radio technology led to the first spread spectrum coreless telephones which were licensed to Uniden. These direct sequence spread radios were the precursors to today’s widely used WiFi wireless access radios. During this commercial period of his career, Dr. Omura developed over 20 patents and became a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1997. He is the recipient of the 2005 IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal. Today Dr. Omura is the Technology Strategist for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and advisor to several commercial companies in the wireless market.

Gail Patricelli GPatricelli_at_ucdavis_dot_edu

Members of the Patricelli lab study animal communication and sexual selection, with a focus on understanding why there is such amazing diversity and complexity in animal signals. Current projects in the Patricelli Lab: 1) The causes and functional implications of directional sound radiation in songbirds 2) Sexual selection and acoustic communication in sage-grouse 3) The effects of noise from energy development on acoustic communication and breeding behaviors of sage-grouse In addition, graduate students in the lab are working on independent projects addressing animal communication.

Ed Stabler epstabler_at_gmail_dot_com

Charles Taylor taylor_at_biology_dot_ucla_dot_edu

Charles Taylor (Co-PI) is a professor in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA. He has long been associated with the field of artificial life, and is PI on an NSF-funded grant developing sensor arrays to study collective understanding by bioacoustic arrays. His group has developed the ability to localize birds, recognize individuals of several species, and is currently involved with efforts to develop linguistic abilities by the arrays.

David K. Tcheng dtcheng_at_ncsa_dot_uiuc_dot_edu

David Tcheng is a research programmer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. His specialty is machine learning and building predictive models. The last few years David has focused on audio problems involving music and bio-acoustic signals. Currently he is building web accessible tools for audio tagging, model formation, and prediction called NESTER (Networked Environment Sonic-Toolkits for Exploratory Research) using SEASR (Software Environment for the Advancement of Scholarly Research). The NESTER project brings together four currently independent research threads to form the foundation for new, cross-domain, high-impact, bio-acoustic research collaboration. Under the rubric of a 3-year field and development study based upon the collection of remotely gathered Cardinalis cardinalis (Northern Cardinal) vocalization data (i.e., bird songs), NESTER will leverage participant expertise in the domains of bio-acoustics, music/audio processing, distributed data mining, and scientific collaboration to develop a suite of networked environmental sonic-toolkit prototypes. Currently there are three NESTER applications: cardinal syllable transciptions, species occupancy prediction, and flight call identification. Currently seeking more applications! Link to NESTER predecessor CARDINAL: http://nester.lis.uiuc.edu/cardinaldemo/CardinalDemo.htm. Link to the SEASR development environment: http://seasr.org/

Edgar E. Vallejo vallejo_at_itesm_dot_edu

Edgar E. Vallejo received his B.S. (1992) and PhD (2000) in Computer Science at the Monterrey Institute of Technology, Mexico. He is currently an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Monterrey Institute of Technology, Mexico. He has been a collaborator of Charles E. Taylor at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UCLA, since 2003. His current research focuses on the application of machine learning methods to the identification of birds in a Mexican tropical rain forrest.

Kung Yao yao_at_ee_dot_ucla_dot_edu

Kung Yao received the B.S.E. (Summa Cum Laude), M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering all from Princeton University, Princeton, N.J. He was a NAS-NRC Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Presently, he is a Distinguished Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at UCLA. In 1969, he was a Visiting Assistant Prof. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1973-74, he was a Visiting Associate Prof. at Eindhoven University of Technology. In 1985-1988, he served as an Assistant Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at UCLA. In 2007, he was a Royal Society Kan Tong Po Visiting Professor at HK Polytechnic University. His research and professional interests include digital and array signal processing in sensor networks, digital communication theory and system, statistical modelling of wireless fading channels, and systolic and VLSI algorithms, architectures, and systems. In recent years, his group has implemented several acoustic and seismic array processing systems and performed various field data collections of vehicles and animals. He was the co-editor of a two volume series of an IEEE Reprint Book on "High Performance VLSI Signal Processing," 1997. Dr. Yao received the IEEE Signal Processing Society's 1993 Senior Award in VLSI Signal Processing and the 2008 IEEE Communications Society/Information Theory Society Joint Paper Award. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE.