Causal Models and Machine Learning in Ecology

Today we’re joined by Bryan Carstens, a professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology & Head of the Tetrapod Division in the Museum of Biological Diversity at The Ohio State University.

In our conversation with Bryan, who comes from a traditional biology background, we cover a ton of ground, including a foundational layer of understanding for the vast known unknowns in species and biodiversity, and how he came to apply machine learning to his lab’s research.

We explore a few of his lab’s projects, including applying ML to genetic data to understand the geographic and environmental structure of DNA, what factors keep machine learning from being used more frequently used in biology, and what’s next for his group.

The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/449.