Successful launch of the interactive educational platform "From Pixels to Populations"
London school students visit campus to learn about launch of new interactive educational platform "From Pixels to Populations" exploring how mathematics and AI are applied in wildlife monitoring and conservation.
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On Monday 13 July, we had the pleasure to host 36 school students from two schools, Barking Abby School (year 11) and Reach Academy Feltham (year 12) for a unique educational experience. The students were introduced to elements of statistical ecology and artificial intelligence via our novel interactive educational platform "From Pixels to Populations" which was funded by an EPSRC Additional Skills Funding Scheme Summer 2025. Using real field data, students - quite enthusiastically - followed the full research pipeline present in many real-world ecological projects, capturing photographs, using AI to recognise individual animals, and applying statistical ecology models to infer population size.
The students also had the opportunity to attend a mathematics career talk, highlighting the different career paths that mathematics can lead to, and how the School of Mathematical Sciences facilitates this. Finally, talks from our student ambassadors provided a unique personalised glimpse about how it is to study mathematics in Queen Mary.
The event was organised by the academics of the Centre for Probability, Statistics and Data Science who created the platform: Kostas Papafitsoros, Eleni Matechou, Silvia Liverani and Linus Wunderlich.
From Pixels to Populations: Centre for Probability, Statistics and Data Science