EXPLORATION THROUGH TECHNOLOGY
Engineers for Exploration (E4E) is a one of a kind program centered around multidisciplinary and collaborative student research projects with the broad goals of protecting the environment, uncovering mysteries related to cultural heritage, and providing experiential learning experiences for undergraduate and graduate students. We team student engineers with scientists from a wide range of disciplines, such as ecology, oceanography and archaeology. Students create new technologies to aid these scientists in their work and then accompany them on field deployments around the world. Projects train students in embedded systems and software, machine learning, electronic integration, mechanical design, system building, as well as project management and team leadership.
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Your support allows us to involve more students, which allows us to continue our research on existing and future projects. It is easy and even a small amount can make a big impact. Donate To UCSD E4E.
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Winter 2025 Info Session
Info session will be held at CSE 1242 on January 14th at 2:00 PM! Engineers for Exploration is a one of a kind program that develops intelligent systems that aid research in conservation, cultural heritage, and exploration. We work closely with archaeologists, biologists, ecologists, and marine scientists to create technologies that aid them in their scientific research. Applications range from determining population counts for endangered animals and studying animal behavior to capturing large-scale ecological data and visualizing archaeological discoveries. Engineers for Exploration centers around student-led teams who tackle the design process from beginning to end, from planning and prototyping various designs, culminating in deploying the system in the field alongside scientists and explorers. This is a unique opportunity to work on a project with real-world impact for our collaborators. This quarter, we are looking for students to join seven different projects, working on topics such as radio tracking pandas and lizards, detecting bird species using machine learning and sound, monitoring sea surface temperature with surfers, and much more! If you are interested, please fill out the application online at https://e4e.ucsd.edu/join. Applications for this quarter should be submitted by January 26th.
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Acoustic Species ID goes to NeurIPS 2024!
Our work, “A Deep Learning Approach to the Automated Segmentation of Bird Vocalizations from Weakly Labeled Crowd-sourced Audio” was accepted and presented at NeurIPS 2024 in the “Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning” Workshop hosted by Climate Change AI! Congrats to the authors: Jacob Ayers, Sean Perry, Samantha Prestrelski, Tianqi Zhang, Ludwig von Schoenfeldt, Mugen Blue, Gabriel Steinberg, Mathias Tobler, Ian Ingram, Curt Schurgers and Ryan Kastner. View of Canada Place, an iconic landmark of Vancouver. View taken from the east side of the Vancouver Convention Center. The conference actually took place in both buildings with an underground tunnel connecting the two, as seen on the bottom right of the image. Taken by Sean Perry This focused on the issue of weakly labeled datasets, often associated with large, bioacoustic crowdsourced datasets. Traditional methods frequently use approaches rooted in digital signal processing approaches to identify the species of interest. The paper takes a look at testing these methods with deep learning models. It can be found here. Credits to Mathias Tobler for first conceptualizing the idea. Key contributions to this work include PyHa, the Python repository where the main technologies used in the paper are stored. Credits primarily to Jacob Ayers for creating the repo and for his vision of the project and Samantha Prestrelski for developing it and carrying out experiments. Further thanks to Gabriel Steinberg for his technical contributions with isolation techniques and chunking methods and Mugen Blue for his training of TweetyNet, which was the most successful method used (as seen in the paper). Shout out to Sean Perry for developing Pyrenote, the tool used to label the data used in the project. Last week, Sean Perry and Ludwig von Schoenfeldt attended NeurIPS 2024 and presented the work! The two traveled out of the country to Vancouver, Canada to attend most of the conference, getting to see hundreds of posters, amazing research in machine learning, and present their own work! It was an inspiring moment getting to see where the future of the field could be heading. Acoustic Species is planning many exciting extensions to this work. We will continue to evaluate how these methods may influence the behavior of upstream models as we continue to work to improve bioacoustic machine learning techinques to identify species of interest. View of North Vancouver, taken from the west side of Canada Place looking northwest. The previous day was raining and the storm had started to move on north, appearing over the valleys of the mountains and the ski resorts. Taken by Sean Perry
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Engineers for Exploration (E4E) Summer Research Program at UC San Diego - Application Submission by February 15th, 2025
UC San Diego’s Engineers for Exploration Summer Research Program is an NSF REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) Site centered around multidisciplinary and collaborative student research with the broad goals of protecting the environment, uncovering mysteries related to cultural heritage, and providing experiential learning experiences. Our program is a full-time paid research experience from June 23rd to August 29th in which students will work in multidisciplinary research teams to aid scientists from the San Diego Zoo, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and UC San Diego in tackling problems in fields such as ecology, physical oceanography, and archeology. During this program, students will create and apply technologies in novel ways to aid scientists in their work, and may have opportunities to accompany these technologies on field deployments around the world. Through these projects, students can expect to learn about embedded systems and software, machine learning, electronics integration, mechanical design, system building, as well as project management and team leadership. For more information, please visit our website at https://e4e.ucsd.edu. Applications are currently being accepted at https://e4e.ucsd.edu/apply through February 15. Applications will continue to be accepted through March 30 if positions are not yet filled. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please feel free to contact me at nthui@ucsd.edu.
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Smartfin - New Fin Potting
Over the past couple years, members of the Smartfin team have been hard at work putting together a new procedure for potting fins at UC San Diego. Just before Thanksgiving break, our team managed to pull a sample fin from our molds. Throughout this journey, our team has had to tackle many different problems, ranging from designing new molds, determining the correct fin makeup, and maintaining pressure vessels to do the potting in. As we move into the new year, our team will now focus on refining our process, and integrating all of the knowledge from the previous efforts so that we can finally get fully potted Smartfins ready. Many thanks to the following people who have contributed to this effort: Megan Martinez Theanie Baskevitch Antara Chugh Hannah Cutler Meena Annamalai Adrian Zugehar Ela Lucas Melissa Chan Sara An Michael Hobrock Gus Blankenberg Tommy Sardarian Riley Meehan Dalton Rust Taylor Wirth Nathan Hui Phil Bresnahan Todd Martz Ryan Kastner Some photos of the progress over the past couple years: Antara, Hannah, and Meena from the 2024 Summer REU potting a fin New potting setup at the SIO Makerspace Finished fins
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FishSense Published in UC San Diego Today
We are pleased to announce that FishSense has been recognized in the UC San Diego Today magazine. You can read the online article here.
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Aqua3D Promo Video
Aqua3D is thrilled to announce the release of our latest promotional video showcasing our cutting-edge underwater camera technology! At Aqua3D, we specialize in developing advanced depth cameras designed for underwater exploration and research. Our technology plays a pivotal role in supporting innovative initiatives like the FishSense project. Check out the video to see how we’re pushing the boundaries of underwater depth imaging!
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Acoustics Species Will be at NeurIPS 2024!
Our paper, “A Deep Learning Approach to the Automated Segmentation of Bird Vocalizations from Weakly Labeled Crowd-sourced Audio,” has been accepted for a spotlight talk and poster presentation for Climate AI’s Tackling Climate Change workshop in NeurIPS 2024! Congratulations to the authors: Jacob Ayers, Sean Perry, Samantha Prestrelski, Tianqi Zhang, Ludwig von Schoenfeldt, Mugen Blue, Gabriel Steinberg, Mathias Tobler, Ian Ingram, Curt Schurgers, and Ryan Kastner!
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Fall 2024 Info Session
Info session will be held at CSE 1242 on October 8th at 2:30 PM! Engineers for Exploration is a one of a kind program that develops intelligent systems that aid research in conservation, cultural heritage, and exploration. We work closely with archaeologists, biologists, ecologists, and marine scientists to create technologies that aid them in their scientific research. Applications range from determining population counts for endangered animals and studying animal behavior to capturing large-scale ecological data and visualizing archaeological discoveries. Engineers for Exploration centers around student-led teams who tackle the design process from beginning to end, from planning and prototyping various designs, culminating in deploying the system in the field alongside scientists and explorers. This is a unique opportunity to work on a project with real-world impact for our collaborators. This quarter, we are looking for students to join seven different projects, working on topics such as radio tracking pandas and lizards, detecting bird species using machine learning and sound, monitoring sea surface temperature with surfers, and much more! If you are interested, please fill out the application online at https://e4e.ucsd.edu/join. Applications for this quarter should be submitted by October 18th.
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Acoustic Species Project Leads Win HDSI Scholarship
We are excited to announce that two of the project leads from the Acoustic Species Identification Team, Ludwig von Schoenfeldt and Tianqi Zhang, have been awarded the prestigious Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute Undergraduate Scholarship under the mentorship of Dr. Ryan Kastner! Together with Sean Perry, they are leading efforts to develop advanced tools for bioacoustic monitoring. The Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute (HDSI) Undergraduate Scholarship supports innovative, student-led projects that push the boundaries of data science. This scholarship will enable the team to continue their work on exploring transformer-based architectures, new audio representations, and advanced data augmentation techniques. Additionally, they are developing a desktop application for collaborators, including the San Diego Zoo. The team will be presenting their work at the HDSI Scholarship Showcase in the spring. This opportunity allows the team to work closely with mentors and develop data-driven approaches to ecological monitoring. Congratulations to Ludwig, Tianqi, and the entire team for their continued dedication and success!
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Summer 2024 Final Presentations
Thank you to the students who participated in our Summer Research program this year! It was great having you all with us, and we really appreciate your contributions, vibes, and learnings! A huge shout out to the following programs for helping to support our summer researchers: National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates Award 2244123 National Science Foundation “Development of a Swarm of Autonomous Subsea Vehicles to Infer Plankton Growth and Transport” project UC San Diego Summer Research Internship Program Matthew Henson Fellowship
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Summer 2024 REU Presentations at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research
Engineers for Exploration’s 2024 Research Engineers for Explorations just wrapped up presenting to our friends and collaborators up at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research in Escondido. Our students shared their projects, current efforts, and results. You can find a link to the presentation below.
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2024 Summer Research Students
This summer, we are hosting 19 students from around the world in our 2024 summer research program at UC San Diego. Meet our students by reading their bios below:
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