Big Wasp Survey PhD Position

Big Wasp Survey has excelled our wildest dreams as a generator of wasp samples and data from across the UK. With three years of sampling (and >30k wasps under our belts), it’s now time to start doing something clever with the data!

We’re looking for a PhD student!

We are seeking a highly motivated student to become a vital part of one of the UK’s most exciting citizen science projects. The Big Wasp Survey (BWS) collects data every year on the distribution and abundance of UK wasps and requires a PhD student with proven analytical skills. The successful candidate will be responsible for designing and implementing novel analytical and machine learning tools for generating and analysing the next generation of citizen science “big data”. There will be the opportunity for considerable independent working and skill development. Depending on the candidate, their skills and interests, opportunities will exist to develop automated species recognition tools, citizen science optimisation approaches and visualisation tools. 

Funding permitting, we envisage that by the start of the PhD (c Autumn 2020), the student will have four years of data from the BWS (>35k wasps from thousands of locations across the UK) at their disposal; there are various ways to exploit these data: e.g. develop species-level automated identification tools, enabling better data management of this successful citizen science project as it expands; ecological modelling to determine how land-use influences wasp distributions, diversity and abundance.

If you’re interested, drop us an email: s.sumner@ucl.ac.uk by 31st Dec 2019

Further reading:

Why we love bees and hate wasps

First Big Wasp Survey paper