“Next Gen” Spotlight: Scott Forrest

Tell us a bit about yourself

Hi I'm Scott, a third year PhD student in the Centre for Data Science at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. I'm working with CSIRO at the interface of data science and ecology, particularly around threatened and invasive animal species. I am passionate about the natural world around us, and I use data science to broaden our understanding so that we can more effectively care for our native species.

What is your PhD in and how did you choose this project?

My PhD is specifically about understanding and predicting animal movement, which we can use for a wide range of conservation applications, but also to learn about animals' behavioural ecology. In this research field the data is typically collected using animal-mounted devices, which can collect a wide range of information from technology such as GPS and accelerometers, magnetometers, microphones, proximity sensors, cameras, sonar, heart-rate sensors, even EEG. We take all of this information and try and understand how animals use the landscape around them, and use that to predict their behaviour and how they might respond to future landscapes.

Any surprises or highlights from your PhD journey?

A highlight was definitely spending some time in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, putting GPS devices on water buffalo. Unfortunately buffalo are an introduced and environmentally-damaging species here in Australia, so CSIRO and partners launched a massive tracking study that I'm lucky enough to be a part of. We were camping in some pretty remote and rugged landscapes, and catching buffalo is quite a complicated logistical operation - we even made it onto ABC's Landline!

How did you get interested in Data Science?

I've always been interested in maths and physics, and I completed my undergraduate studies in engineering, but my interest in data science really came from understanding that an effective way to learn about and protect our natural systems is through the collection and analysis of data. From there I've been fascinated to learn about the kinds of problems in animal behaviour that researchers have used data science techniques to answer.

What do you see as the big challenge facing the ADSN and the entire Data Science Community? Is there a big research question we should be tackling?

As someone doing research about the natural environment I'm biased (and there are many other important questions). But as an example, we are losing biodiversity at an alarming pace and the impacts of climate change will be felt by everyone around the world. For biodiversity loss, in many cases we don't know what's driving the decline, and its's likely to be a range of factors. In some cases to understand this we simply need to collect more data, but we also need original thinking about other sources of data that already exist, and the methods to combine and analyse them. To do this effectively we require close collaboration between domain scientists who know their system deeply, and data scientists who have the skills required to identify and analyse complex datasets, which of course extends to all other scientific disciplines.

Fun fact about yourself...

I've spent about 6 months of my life at sea working on a tuna fishing boat.