The presentations highlighted some important and varied research that data scientists can be involved in, such as: identifying plants with potential to curing malaria, efforts to auto-catalogue plants based on their important medical characteristics, and identifying coffee plant species robust to climate change. Discussions between the students and the presenters were enlightening as to the challenges of being a data scientist, particularly in balancing their work time between different projects and funding applications. Overall, it was great to meet the guys from Kew and feedback from all involved was very positive!
Daniel Milner, Compass CDT Cohort 3
Title: Harnessing Botanical and Mycological Knowledge: Data-Driven Solutions for Global Challenges
Speakers: Adam Richard-Bollans, Research Fellow, and Eren Karabey, Kew Gardens
Abstract:
Harnessing Botanical and Mycological Knowledge: Data-Driven Solutions for Global Challenges
A vast amount of botanical and mycological knowledge exists within Kew as well as in global datasets and published scientific literature. In this talk Adam and Eren will discuss their work on turning knowledge into data and the ways they are using data to tackle a variety of global challenges; including extracting structured data from scientific papers, analysing phytochemical diversity across the plant tree of life, searching for new medicinal plant-derived compounds, analysing the chemical composition of coffee species and predicting germination rates of orchid seeds.
Dr. Adam Richard-Bollans is a Future Leader Fellow at RBG, Kew. With a background in mathematics and computing, his main work is focused on machine learning methods to efficiently search the estimated 343,000 known vascular plant species for new compounds of pharmaceutical interest.
Eren Karabey is a student on placement at Kew as an undergraduate intern. Eren is studying Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bath. His main project is to automatically build machine learning-ready datasets from open access research papers.
About Kew Science
Scientists at Kew work collaboratively and globally to understand and protect biodiversity and to discover sustainable solutions to some of our biggest global challenges. Kew Science encompasses a wide range of disciplines and activities, from analysing evolutionary processes and ecological interactions, to exploring bioactive molecules to unlock useful properties in plants and fungi. Kew also holds a globally unique, substantial and growing collection of fungal and plant specimens, illustrations, databases, scientific literature, and archives of unpublished material. Ongoing digitisation of these collections is beginning to unleash new opportunities for large-scale data mining and analysis for scientific discovery and innovation.
Schedule:
- 2.00 – 3.00pm Seminar + Q&A (Rm. 2.04, Fry Building)
- 3.00 – 4.00pm Networking session (Common Room, Fry Building)
Location: Room 2.04, Fry Building