Tell us about your background. Where are you from? What brought you to Mpala? Where have you previously studied or conducted research?
I am French/British and am currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University. I hold a PhD in Zoology from the University of Oxford. Before my current role, I worked with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime on its program to combat wildlife crime, the European Commission, and the U.S. Department of Defense, where my work focused on tracking animals using earth-observation satellite data.
What projects are you currently working on at Mpala? What are your research goals?
I am currently supervising four bright and motivated undergraduate students from Princeton (spanning rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors) who are with me at Mpala for two months under the High Meadows Environment Institute (HMEI) Internship program. They are learning skills in field biology and computational analysis and playing tricks on me while I am driving.
As a team, we are working on two research projects that apply computational tools to the study of animal movement and behaviour. The first automates the construction of ethograms for olive baboons from drone video, and more recently explores whether this can be combined with accelerometer-based ethograms. The second examines the collective escape behavior of plains zebra herds using drone footage and pose-estimation software. Across both, we aim to track animal behaviour sequences more effectively in order to better understand patterns and drivers of movement.
What is one of your favorite things about working at Mpala? (feel free to share any relevant stories from your time at Mpala)
One of my favourite things is the diversity and sheer beauty of the animals, which is extraordinary and the constantly shifting human dynamic at the centre, with research groups arriving and departing from all over Kenya and the world, so there’s always someone new to meet.
A recent highlight from a few weeks ago, together with the HMEI interns – Jon, Ana, Caspar and Wilson – we took part in the Lewa Marathon, running the 10 km and half-marathon events. Between us, the students and I finished in 1st, 4th, 10th and 19th place. The course runs across a beautiful stretch of land, and the event raises money for wildlife conservation; it was a great pleasure to partake.
What impact do you believe your time at Mpala will have on your professional career?
My time at Mpala has strengthened my career in two important ways. It has deepened my fieldwork experience, giving me the chance to work with wild animals in a challenging natural setting, and it has broadened my hands-on teaching and mentoring experience through supervising students in the field.
