This season it’s become clear that computing skills are vital for working in the natural sciences. In this episode, we were fortunate to speak with Madlen Wilmes, co-author of the book "Computing Skills for Biologists: A Toolbox". We discussed the book and why it’s a great resource for students and teachers. In addition to the book, Madlen shared her experience and advice on transitioning from academia to an industry career and how data analytic skills transfer to jobs that your professionals might not always consider. Join us and learn more about the book and careers using transferable skills.

In this episode, we talked shop with Hager Radi about her biodiversity monitoring work. While biodiversity modeling may sound simple, count organisms and mark their location, there is a lot more to it than that! Incomplete and biased data can make estimations hard. There are also many species with very few observations in the wild. Using machine learning and remote sensing data, scientists can build models that predict species distributions with limited data. Listen in and hear about Hager’s work tackling these challenges and the tools she has built.

Today, Ashay Aswale and Tony Lopez shared their work on swarm robotics and what they have learned from ants. Robotic swarms must solve the same problems that eusocial insects do. What if your pheromone trail goes cold? What if you’re getting bad information from a bad-actor within the swarm? Answering these questions can help tackle serious robotic challenges. For example, a swarm of robots can lose a few members to accidents and malfunctions, but a large robot cannot. Additionally, a swarm could be host to many castes like an ant colony. Specialization with redundancy built in seems like a win-win! Tune in and hear more about this fascinating topic.