Becky Heath

Summary

I am a PhD student working under the supervision of Dr. Lorenzo Picinali, Prof. Rob Ewers and Dr. David Orme. Funded by the Quantitative Methods in Ecology and Evolution Centre for Doctoral Training (QMEE CDT). Previously I obtained a Masters in Natural Sciences from the University of Exeter, where I specialised in Computational Biology and Land Use Management. 

I now work on developing and assessing acoustic recording devices for ecoacoustic research. Over the course of my PhD, I have completed an appraisal of commonplace practice designed to reduce data usage in the field. I used standard Acoustic Indices and a CNN-derived soundscape fingerprinting algorithm in this project. All audio from this project was gathered from the Sustainability of Altered Forest Ecosystems (SAFE) project in Malaysian Borneo. 

Secondly, my work has been built around developing and deploying a 6-channel spatial recorder that can be used for ecoacoustic localisation. This recorder has shown promise in lab tests and is pending long-term field assessment. 

Alongside my core PhD work, I worked with UNEP-WCMC and other members of my CDT (Dominic Brass and Valentina Marconi), to build an algorithm for creating a universal special list across multiple taxonomic databases. 

Beyond academic research, I am an Outreach Leader at Imperial Outreach. Through outreach, I've given talks to 100s of students, run in-person lab workshops and been a featured scientist on the Science In Action portal (coming soon!). Science in Action saw me host a short film about at-home activities for kids to get involved with science. 

I also volunteer with In2Science, participated in the Imperial-Tokyo tech Global Fellows programme and am a member of Imperial 600. 

Publications

Journals