Meet the Team
The VIP team consists of undergraduate students from a range of year groups and degree pathways working alongside graduate students and staff collaborators.
The Dolphin Acoustics VIP programme is led by Julie Oswald and Vincent Janik at the Scottish Oceans Institute.
Other staff collaborators from the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics are instrumental in running the project.
The programme currently has 24 students.
The Team
Dr Julie Oswald
Project Supervisor
Dr Oswald is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biology and the Degree Controller for the Marine Biology undergraduate degree program. Before joining the University of St Andrews in 2016, Dr Oswald was Vice-President of Biowaves, Inc., a bio-acoustic consultingcompany. She is currently the Director of the St Andrews VIP Programme and has co-supervised the Dolphin Acoustics VIP since it began in 2020. Her research is focused on developing acoustic species classifiers for cetacean species as well as characterizing and comparing dolphin whistle repertoires. Dr Oswald developed the Real-time Odontocete Call Classification Algorithm (ROCCA), a classification module in the freely available acoustic recording and analysis software platform, PAMGuard. It contains a suite of classifiers for dolphin species in many geographic locations and is the leading package used in the field by universities, NGO’s, government agencies and industry partners worldwide. Dr Oswald was recently awarded the Allen Institute for AI 2024 Conservation Technology Award whichrecognizes innovation making measurable conservation impacts and accelerating the adoption of technology-driven solutions for wildlife conservation.
Prof Vincent Janik
Project Supervisor
Prof Janik is interested in the evolution of complexity in communication systems and how this complexity can affect social interaction. This work takes two different approaches. On the one hand he investigates environmental constraints that influence the design of vocal communication systems, and on the other he studies the underlying cognitive skills required to overcome or circumvent such constraints. Much of this work concentrates on vocal communication in the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus). This species combines the ability of vocal learning with complex cognitive skills that exceed those of most other animals. Furthermore, dolphins rely almost exclusively on acoustic communication which avoids the difficulties connected with studying multi-modal communication systems.
Dr Hannah Worthington
Project Supervisor
Dr Worthington is a Senior Lecturer in Statistics and member of the Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling (CREEM, https://www.creem.st-andrews.ac.uk/). Her research focusses on developing and implementing methods in applied statistical ecology to provide improved tools for animal conservation and population management. She is particularly interested in methods to estimate abundance and density, model animal movement and habitat usage, the application of causal discovery to complex spatiotemporal data and the use of citizen science data. She works on problems across marine and terrestrial settings using data from passive acoustic monitoring, camera-traps and individual tags.
Dr Olexandr Konovalov
Project Supervisor
Dr Konovalov is a lecturer in the School of Computer Science, where he is leading the Research Software Group, focussed on interdisciplinary computational research and development of underpinning research software, training in scientific computing, and studies in research software aspects.
A pure mathematician by training, he completed a PhD in algebra and number theory at the Institute of Mathematics of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine. After that, he started to work with (and eventually to contribute to) an open-source system GAP, used for research and teaching in the area of discrete computational algebra.
Emily McCloskey
Research Assistant
Emily is currently a research assistant with Dr Julie Oswald and Professor Vincent Janik. She helps train new students on identifying and tracing whistles in Raven and PAMGuard (ROCCA), and manages the data our VIP creates. She completed her undergraduate thesis on burst pulse sequences with Dr Oswald in 2022 at the University of St Andrews, and then continued her thesis work with Dr Oswald during the Marine Mammal Science master's programme. Since then she has continued this work by researching stereotyped burst pulse sequences in Pacific delphinids on the west coast of North America.
Rosie Day
PhD student
Rosie is a PhD student of Dr Julie Oswald and Prof Vincent Janik. She has been involved in the VIP since her undergraduate degree at the University of St Andrews.
She now assists in teaching the biology and ARTwarp group as part of her PhD.
Her research focuses on Common dolphin whistles and how we can use whistle repertoires and biodiversity measures to learn more about these dolphins.
May Norwood
Research Assistant
May is a research assistant working on dolphin whistles and manatee vocalisations recorded off the coast of West Africa, with the aim of developing an acoustic classifier for the region. As a former Dolphin Acoustics VIP student herself, she credits the VIP with sparking her enthusiasm for bioacoustics. She enjoys helping new students and seeing how the project continues to grow and develop. She also works to facilitate the wider VIP programme, and is enthusiastic about supporting education.
James Sullivan
Software Developer
James is pursuing a joint degree in Mathematics and Computer Science. His primary contribution to the VIP has been in the design and creation of an open-source database management system (OCEAN). James is passionate about using technology to aid in scalable and effective research such as in the VIP, and is excited to see what direction it goes in the future.
The students
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Alex Barton
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Alex Holm
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Andrew Morrison
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Elle Debienne
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Emily Pondaven
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Helen Black
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Hynek Hartl
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Ilena Day-Dell'Olio
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Jacqueline Park
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James Ross
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James Sullivan
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Kai Kerlaff
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Katie Cardwell
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Kirsty Clay
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Logan Crawford
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Louisa Willan
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Lucas Bookey
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Marco Scully
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Maya Couey
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Michalina Moscicka
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Pedro Gronda Garrigues
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Rosie Wharton
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Siobhan Henderson
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Tamra Chan