Welcome four MSc students

From left-right top-down, Xinyue Xu, James Shortland, Andrés Sánchez Castrillón, and Tug O’Flaherty.

We are happy to welcome four MSc students from Queen Mary University of London who are joining the Sensing the Forest project and will work on related final projects. Welcome!

• Xinyue Xu is a MSc Sound and Music Computing student in EECS at Queen Mary University of London. She participates in the “Sensing the Forest” project, focusing on research in parameter mapping sonification and interactive music systems and under the supervision of Dr Anna Xambó and Dr Luigi Marino. Her research interests center on translating meteorological sensor data into sound and enhancing the understanding of the connection between forests and climate change through sonification techniques. She is also interested in immersive audio, 3D binaural sound rendering, and spatial hearing.

• James Shortland is an MSc Data Science and Artificial Intelligence student at Queen Mary University of London. Originally from California, he is passionate about the outdoors and exploring AI’s potential to support nature conservation and combat climate change. He is contributing to the Sensing the Forest project through his work on Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) under the supervision of Dr Anna Xambó and Dr Luigi Marino.

• Andrés Sánchez Castrillón (Queen Mary University of London) is a Master’s student in Artificial Intelligence with a focus on Computer Vision. Originally from Medellín, Colombia, he has a background in software engineering and a keen interest in using AI to address environmental and sustainability challenges. Currently, he is starting to explore soundscape analysis for detecting patterns linked to climate change as part of his research under the supervision of Dr Anna Xambó and Dr Luigi Marino.

• Tug O’Flaherty (Queen Mary University of London) is a Sound and Music Computing MSc student at Queen Mary University of London. Having previously undertaken a BSc (Hons) in Computer Science at Kingston University, he specialises in web and cross-platform mobile application development. Tug is excited to be applying his software development background to producing an interactive tool for the sonification and visualisation of climate and tree data within the Sensing the Forest project, under the direction of Dr Anna Xambó and Dr Luigi Marino. He is passionate about climate change awareness and community-focussed initiatives, and keen to contribute his expertise in data mappings, music, and web development.