 All right, well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on where you're joining us from today, welcome. My name is Yana Aranda, and I'm the Director of the Engineering Global Development Team at ASME. I'm President of Engineering for Change, and I'm so pleased to welcome you to today's webinar on Engineering Conservation for Life on Land and Below Water. We have assembled an incredible panel of leaders in conservation from across the globe to share their insights on the role of technology, innovation, and engineering in preserving biodiversity and ensuring that we meet the United Nations sustainable development goals, particularly sustainable development goal 14 on Life Below Water and SDG 15 on Life on Land. As a reminder, today's webinar will be archived on E4C site as well as on our YouTube channel. And if you're following us on Twitter today, please do join the conversation with our dedicated hashtag, hashtag E4C webinars. Now, we're really eager to see where you all are joining us from today. And I know that all of you are likely to be Zoom experts, but just for getting our Zoom muscles warmed up, please do type into the chat where in the world you're joining us from. So I'm here today coming to you from Brooklyn, New York, and feel free to put into the chat where you are just some housekeeping items. Please do make sure that you type all of your questions into Q&A versus into the chat so we can try to keep track of them. Let's see where everyone is. Oh, typically I would have seen some. Oh, I see you are. Oh no, chat is disabled. This is absolutely frightening. I am so shocked. I apologize. Well, at least it looks like Q&A is working. Very atypical for us. Feel free to use the Q&A for the moment, me to make sure what's going on. This is not usually what happens. So there might be looks like there is a glitch in the matrix today. We do apologize for that. But the good news is the Q&A works. And I see answers coming in. Welcome from Oregon, Seattle, and Minnesota. Oh, wait. I also see some chats. Also, Senegal. Oh, that's because it's one of our panelists. Well, this is really exciting, and you never know what's going to happen in the digital world. But here we are. Welcome from Peru to Maine to Uganda to Poughkeepsie, Newark to Pennsylvania, and Goa. We're so thrilled to have you. Thank you for rolling with the punches here. Always exciting online. Great. More answers coming in. I'm glad that Q&A is working for us. And this is why we practice so that we can avoid these kinds of issues. Now moving right along, I wanted to make sure that we took a moment to give you a little bit of information about who we are. This is the first time you are joining us and before moving on to our presenters. Next slide, Catalina, please. So engineering for change, if you're new to us, or E4C for short, is a nonprofit dedicated to preparing, educating, and activating the international technical workforce to improve the quality of life of people on the planet. We do this by delivering knowledge and training, as well as convening diverse actors including academic institutions, engineering associations, private sector actors, NGOs, and multilateral agencies worldwide to pursue concrete joint initiatives and expedite progress towards the SDG. Many of you are familiar with our digital platform, which is engaging a growing global community of more than one million people worldwide with content such as this webinar. Engineering for Change.org is a gateway for members to access the latest developments, best practices, opportunities, and expert perspectives in engineering and sustainable development. It is our leading platform for delivering programs that train and deploy technical professionals to advance the social sector. At E4C, we have a proven model for understanding the critical design and research needs of social impact organizations, which can only be addressed by diverse problem solvers in the E4C global community. We work with diverse organizations ranging from academic institutions, social enterprises, private sector, multilateral agencies to co-design and define impact projects where E4C can deliver transformative support. And this we do across three streams, our impact research projects through which we investigate critical research questions at the intersection of engineering, sustainable development, and global issues. Our design for good projects where we assist organizations with part of design, development, or implementation. And this is in fact where two of today's speakers worked with us this past year, both CQOR and Panama Flying Labs were organizations that benefited from the design for good work that we do. And lastly, our advancing work flows projects are improving system workflow processes to ensure that partners can achieve their impact goals more efficiently. E4C also delivers bespoke support to leading organizations across the social innovation ecosystem from design and implementation of innovation challenges to acceleration of social enterprises and capacity building of teams. E4C works along key staff to overcome roadblocks and meet impact objectives. And we're so glad that ConservationxLabs is one of the organizations that we had the privilege of working with over the past year and change to do exactly that. Now, to achieve the objectives determined together with our partners, we'll lean on the insights and strategic guidance of our global network of multidisciplinary experts and our community of rising engineers, scientists and architects globally. Impact projects integrate our E4C fellows whom we exposed to these urgent issues and trained to execute the mix of scholarly work, private sector market research and human-centered design required to propel the social sector forward. Since 2014, we've awarded more than 200 fellowships to young professionals representing over 40 nationalities. Our cohort has engaged with organizations represented on this webinar today. To reach the sustainable development goals by 2030, we need the collective intellect, comprehensive systems understanding and problem-solving capacity of a prepared technical workforce. At E4C, we're dedicated to building this human infrastructure, closing the gaps in information silos and connecting the actors advancing sustainability in every sector, including the sector where we focus today, conservation. With that, I'm pleased to introduce you to one of E4C's program associates and a former fellow herself, Mescarolina Rojas, who is working on her mechanical engineering degree and also working as a research and administrative assistant at the FABLAB at the Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá. She has multiple years of experience working in this space and is also working actively as a technology focal point for the United Nations major group for children and youth and she will give us some insights into what is the state of affairs with SDGs 15 and 14. Carolina, over to you. Thank you, Yana, for that introduction. It's a pleasure for me to be here. Before I introduce our panelists for today, I do want to share with the audience why we are here or where we assembled this panel. So every year since 2015, when the 17 sustainable development goals were instated, a couple of them are revised in depth and this year, two of the SDGs that were prioritized were SDG 14 and 15, which cover the protection of life on land and below water. So if we aim to achieve the goal set, it is important to recognize that our largest ecosystem, our ocean is endangered, land-based pollution, such as plastic and nutrient runoff are killing marine life and it was estimated that in 2021, 17 million metric tons of plastic entered out oceans. Apart from this, the continued increase in ocean and civilization and temperature rise is also present in marine life and its ecosystems and between 29 and 2018, we lost 14% of our coral reef. It is also worth mentioning that the livelihoods of almost half a billion people are being affected because they depend at least partially on small-scale fisheries and currently there is a need to restore fish stocks which are threatened from overfishing, illegal, off-apported and unregulated fishing to ensure a sustainable contribution of fisheries to economic growth. Our human activities have also put in almost pressures on our terrestrial ecosystems. It is documented that over the coming decade, more than 40,000 species are at risk of extinction. We keep losing habitats. 10 million hectares of forests are being destroyed each year, mainly due to our culture and although progress has been made in protecting key biodiversity areas, more than half remain unprotected. Biodiversity has been largely neglected in COVID-19 recovery. So having both SDGs in focus and to host a challenge to all stakeholders to devise how to ensure we conserve and sustainably use our marine and terrestrial ecosystems. So key actions are urgently needed to not only reverse net loss of habitat but also change our human activity to these negative impacts. As an engineer, I am looking at this challenge from the lens of the science, technology and innovation community. So the guiding question for us today is how can we mobilize the engineering and technical community to protect, restore and promote sustainable use of our ecosystems? Our panelists today are spur-heading conservation efforts through technology and innovation and we'll be sharing about each of their organization, what their organizations are doing. So it is my pleasure to introduce our first panelist, Cassie Hoffman. She is the global development and innovation lead at ConservationX Labs. She is a social scientist with expertise in market mechanisms for conservation, community development and social marketing and behavior change. Currently, she directs the USA Finance Accelerating Innovation for Artisanal and Small Scale Manual operations in the Amazon program. So over to you, Cassie. Thanks. And I should share my own slides. Y'all can see my slides. Yes, we can. Great. Thank you so much, Carolina, for that introduction. And as Kara said, my name is Cassie Hoffman and I'm the global development and innovation lead at ConservationX Labs. And thank you very much to Engineering for Change for this invitation this morning. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about our work. And I mean, ConservationX Labs kind of fits squarely into the thrust of this webinar. We are a technology and innovation company based in Washington, D.C. with a mission to address and prevent the six-mast extinction and really widespread biodiversity loss as it benefits the planet and humans and has intrinsic value in and of itself. And ConservationX Labs, we recognize as Kara also really mapped out that the environmental problems are really growing and exponential in nature. We see climate change, species loss, plastic degradation, habitat loss. And in the 2019, the UN reported that we can expect over a million species to go extinct in the coming years given all of these different threats. And ConservationX Labs was founded on the idea that we really need to mobilize different tools, technologies, products, innovation, and really democratize who can participate in the conservation field writ large in order to rise to the magnitude of these environmental challenges and problems. So really in all hands on deck and that we need really urgent action and impactful and scalable action. And we have kind of a few pillars of our organization. We have directed innovation, which really is in-house teams of engineers working on tools and products to identify specific conservation needs that we've identified with partners and stakeholders. We also run, we have an open innovation program, typically running grand challenges, prizes, open innovation competitions, really with the idea to attract anyone with talent and passion and skills to apply to different environmental and conservation challenges and really trying to target people at specific types of solutions in places where there are leverage to change a problem. And through these activities, we are trying to encourage lots of different people through a community of innovators to feel empowered to work on environmental problems. We've also run hackathons and maker fairs and have a university curriculum that we use to kind of inspire people to really attract new people and disciplines and engineers, technologists to work on these problems and issues. And just to drive a little bit deeper and give some examples of some of our hardware and software solutions that our engineering teams are working on with the caveat that Carolina introduced me as a social scientist at the beginning, but one of our teams is working on this tool called the NABIT and it's a really a handheld DNA analysis tool with the ability to identify species in the field. Really an absence presence is the species here or not. And there are actually a lot of different applications for this type of solution. It's like having a genetics lab in your pocket, but there are also a lot of specific conservation applications for addressing wildlife trafficking and identifying invasive species and for species monitoring. And I mean, honestly, potentially diseases and other wildlife spread diseases. And then secondly, the Sentinel is, we have a team working on this product called the Sentinel and it's really an upgrade for wildlife monitoring tools and camera traps. I'm sure many people know that to date, field biologists typically have, you know, puts kind of systems of these cameras up in the field to identify specific types of species or parks use them to try to monitor for poachers. And frequently you have to go out and collect a, well, collect a photo card every couple of weeks, months and there might be many false positives on this camera card. And so the idea of the Sentinel is that they're trying to run machine learning algorithms on chip in the field and send photos with the target species or item of interest back to, you know, back to some researcher or protected area managers to be able to take real time monitoring and into account and make decisions and plan actions. So these are some of the examples that CXL's engineering team in-house working, looking for, you know, partners to deploy these and test these and eventually get them to market. And I wanted to talk just briefly in the time I had left some of the open innovation work which is where I actually, my work focuses on. And we've had teams, you know, work on things like plastic pollution and ran the microfiber innovation challenge looking for textiles that shed less microfiber plastics and pollutions. And my colleague, Chad, helped run this global cooling prize looking for residential cooling technologies that were more efficient and, you know, useless refrigerants that typically have a very high global warming potential. Honestly, really large emissions savings and climate potential from those types of solutions, especially as the world gets hotter and more people need cooling. But we've been working on with Engineering for Change, this Artisanal Mining Grand Challenge which is working with the extractive industry because a lot of us do use gold materials and minerals in a lot of our daily products and in our daily life. But we've been working on this challenge to try to reduce the environmental and social impacts of our artisanal and small scale mining and make it more environmentally and socially responsible. Recognizing, like I said, that we use these metals and minerals in our daily life. And many people might not know, but in places like the Amazon, there are large gold deposits and that kind of the economic shock from the pandemic and rising gold prices have meant that a lot of people, thousands of individuals or collectives of individuals have gone out to look for gold, which means frequently clear cutting tropical forests of high biodiversity, processing the sediment and soil, looking for gold particles and using mercury to kind of turn this into a gold sponge. And this process, when multiplied by thousands of people can result in really these desert-like landscapes that have mercury contaminated pools. And some of this mining is illegal, but some of it is also informal and just people don't have access to more modern tools or field-ready tools that would cause less impact. So we've been running this challenge, identifying innovators and then working with local partners and communities on the ground to actually test solutions. And just to give you an idea of what this looks like in the mining space, this means monitoring tools to keep people from mining in places like protected areas and indigenous territories, but also cleaner and safer tools throughout the mining process that don't use harmful chemicals like mercury and bring a cleaner, safer, less environmentally impactful process that's more transparent. So that's just a broad overview of some of our work and some of examples. I'm just leaving you with my contact information and some of our websites and let you know that we'd love to be in touch with people who are interested and excited and enthusiastic about the space. And we do use our challenges to try to engage new people and we have a challenge launching in 2023 that will be focused more on fire and the threat from wildfire that is occurring more frequently throughout the world, unfortunately given climate change, drying up lands and forests and et cetera and more wild or forest human contact. So thank you again for the invitation. That's my brief overview. I'm happy to talk with everyone in the chat and be in touch via email. Thank you. Thank you, Cassie. I want to remind our audience that you can pose questions to our panelists in the Q and A section. And I want to introduce now our next panelist, Nandini. Nandini is Program Manager at Technology for Wildlife and she has an NPA in Environment Policy from Cornell University at Tech for Wildlife. She oversees the applied research projects and is in charge of program strategy, project implementation and impact assessment. So over to you, Nandini. Thank you and thank you for having me here. I just set up my screen, but in the meantime, I'm really excited to be here and I'm looking forward to speaking to all of you. Is my screen visible? Yes, we can see it. Perfect. Hi, everyone, as already mentioned, I'm Nandini and I work as a Program Manager at Technology for Wildlife Foundation. And our mission is to amplify conservation impact and we do so by collaborating with partners and implementing programs programs that have aligned conservation outcomes. So we try and make the conservation impact as effective as we can. And we do so through the appropriate use of modern technology. So this means that the use of technology in the first place, the choice of which technology that we're using as well as the way in which it's deployed is fitting for the conservation outcome and as sensitively done for everyone involved, human and non-human. So our skills are in geospatial analysis and robot operations. And the latter often feeds data into the spatial analysis. And these are then applied for research and consulting services or for direct project execution. So just as quick examples of the kind of work that we do. An example of the research and consulting is we did a research project in consultation to an NGO to identify effective technologies to predict the presence of and then detect abandoned fishing gear or lost fishing gear in oceans. So that's one kind of project that we do. And otherwise we directly implement projects and one example of that was we did high altitude lake exploration in the Trans Himalayas using aerial and underwater drones. We were exploring this habitat but also looking for possible plastic contamination in areas that wasn't possible to test before. And for our work we use off the shelf equipment and these are aerial drones or remotely operated vehicles and then we adapt their use and design surveys according to species and project needs. So just, I wanted to just give you an example of one of our projects for context of the kind of work that we do. So I'll just quickly walk you through that. So a project that we're doing is a fine scale study of the Ganjite River Dolphin and Ghariyals which are freshwater crocodiles in regulated river systems using aerial drones. And we're doing this in conjunction with collaborators who are using both these visual methods as well as acoustic methods. So both these species, the River Dolphin falls into the endangered category and the Ghariyals are critically endangered. And the idea of this project is to better understand how these species use their habitat and their behavior and to observe how it's affected by changing flows through the regulation of the water. So the idea is to collect this information and communicate it in a way that can influence integrating ecological needs within the river management system. So when we're designing the project, we look at whether the tech we have can be effective in capturing something that either could not be done before or it can now be done more efficiently. And in this case, both of those things are happening. So River Dolphins are really difficult to study and they generally surface for very brief moments and then they go underwater. So they're quite difficult to capture from handheld cameras. So and the water in the Indo-Ganjite basin is very turbid because the system is very silty. So using underwater cameras is really not a possibility or an effective solution. So for reference, that tiny blob in the middle of the screen is actually a surfacing dolphin and that's how most sightings are just deep subset like second glimpses. So I just wanted to play a quick video of a dolphin surfacing to give you an idea of what it's like. They're in the center of the screen. That's one video for the dolphin surfacing. I'll just wait once again because it's quite brief. Yeah, so we are using drones in this case to try and study these species in a way that wasn't possible before. So we're able to document behavior, habitat feeding and even social interactions and have evidence for it, which wasn't a possibility before. For example, in this image, you can see a dolphin and its calf and we observed that the mother was bringing the calf near the bank and leaving it and returning. And this is a behavior that had been anecdotally noted before, but again, it's very, had been really hard to document. So being able to have official documentation of this is really valuable in understanding that habitat needs to form an effective conservation. Ghariyas are more easily visible visually through land and from boats, but UAVs allow us to cover larger areas and also do so in much shorter amounts of times. We can do population surveys much more efficiently. And further, we have added benefits of being able to estimate their size accurately and from that their age. So we have a better understanding of the composition of a population. They're also able to make fine scale maps of the availability and the use of habitats. So the sandbars that you can see these four Ghariyas actually resting on is influenced by how the flow of the river is regulated. So being able to document this and how it's affecting the population is really valuable for its management. I just wanted to bring in a little aspect of the technical and engineering aspects of what you have to do in the fields, which is in this case, a lot of it was like calculating the field of view of the drone, what height would be perfect. So the species wouldn't be affected, but would be capturing in enough clarity what angle, what speed, the direction of the sun, the environmental conditions. And a lot of that has to be adapted at least for the first time when you're there. For example, the interplay between the sun angle, the directional flight and the clay on the bodies of the Ghariyal was affecting the color in which they were appearing. And we were only able to design some of that or we had to adapt our transit designs based on that once we're on the field. So you do so in, of course, like based on all the regulations and with consultations with species experts to see what would be the real least disturbance. And of course, like the technical aspects and specs of the drone itself to see what makes sense. So that was just a brief intro into what we do and the kind of work that we do. And thank you for listening and I'm looking forward to the discussion. Thank you very much, Nandini. Now I'll pass it on to our third speaker, Myles. Garnagal, he's an engineer at Secor. He graduated from the University of Kansas with a bachelor's in civil and environmental engineering as a lead engineer at Secor. He focuses on the upscaling of coral restoration by taking biological lessons learned from researching sourcing ways to implement them through design and manufacturing. So over to you, Myles. Thank you for that intro there, Kero. And you should be able to see my screen now. Is that right? Good, I got thumbs up. Yeah, well, thank you for the invite to be here today. I appreciate it. Looking forward to questions at the end of this, but just quickly to give everyone an idea of Secor, who we are, what we do and how we apply engineering. As Kero said, click. I started out outside of coral restoration. I now have the fortune of working in it, but I just wanted to put this up here real quick to highlight the fact that as an engineer, if there's anybody sitting out there and doesn't know how to get into working in this stuff, but you want to do it, you don't necessarily have to start there because a lot of the experience that I gained working in the engineering consulting field, I now apply to the work that I do, working with coral restoration. But before we talk about exactly how we do it, I want to make sure everyone understands how restoration is done. There are two primary modes of coral restoration. The first is asexual propagation or fragmentation, where you have something like these branching corals that you see here in this image. And these branching corals will naturally, in a storm, if there's a bunch of wave action or they get hit by something during that storm, a piece of them will break off, fall onto the bottom of the ocean, naturally reattach and start to propagate and build a brand new colony there. And so we do that as a form of coral gardening or we have these nursery trees where we grow out fragments, break them off and then go and plant them onto the reef having some sort of physical attachment. The other mode of coral restoration is sexual propagation of coral, where two parent colonies are gonna release these packets of egg and sperm into the water column. And those two different colonies will meet in the water column, fertilize, and then go down into the reef and settle to become this brand new polyp that will grow into a mature spawning adult someday. And to give you all a little just reference on that, here's a video of that spawning event happening. It's the most amazing thing you'll ever see in your life. Looks like it's snowing underwater. Look at those beautiful little tentacles. I just think corals are so cool. But I didn't know anything about them until like three years ago. So back to how we do it, we're capturing those larvae directing the settlement for our restoration. And so Seacore International, our mission is creating and sharing the tools and technologies to sustainably restore coral reefs worldwide. And we do that through this surprisingly unique approach where we have all of these incredibly brilliant scientists that are doing the research, building the understanding of these corals that we're trying to restore to better implement the work that we're trying to do as we go towards scaled coral restoration. Now we have those scientists are feeding the information to me in our technology group where we're developing tools and technologies to better do that restoration to scale it. And then we have an implementation program where we bring on partners and provide them with the materials, with the training, with the tools that they need to be able to scale restoration. And after a five year period when they've completed that program, they should have developed a sustainable restoration program that will not only help them lead to their restoration goals but also have the ability to teach others how to do this work. But what do I mean when I say upscaled restoration? Right now, the majority of coral restoration projects exist on this small square there, like a hectare scale. But in order to have any sort of meaningful impact, we need to be thinking in orders of magnitude larger at this square kilometer style. And so that's really where the engineering comes into play here and where I am applying my background and helping to manage some of these projects. And so how do we do it? So we have to collect all those coral larvae that I... And so I guess I should step back there. SeaCorp primarily focuses on larval propagation of coral out of those two modes of restoration. Because it is the least used as of right now and we believe that it has the potential to take that this order of magnitude shift to the next level of restoration efforts. And so currently we go out and collect from individual colonies when they spawn. But something that I'm working on right now that we're working on is developing collectors at a larger scale. So we can collect from multiple colonies at once. And then once we've collected those gametes, we assist the fertilization process in the lab and then introduce them to our coral rearing in sea two basins or cribs, which take the pressure off of needing to have an on land footprint to do all of this work. And then inside of these cribs, we have our seeding units, which is where we are trying to direct these coral larvae to settle onto. So this is gonna be their new home once they settle onto those units. And we've designed these for specific purposes because once we, you know, micro habitats for the coral, but also once they have the coral settled on them, divers are going to take them out to the reef and they're gonna be shaped to wedge into the cracks and crevices on that reef in the hopes that those coral are gonna grow out and cover that entire colony attached to the reef around it and becomes mature spawning adults in their future. And so these are just a few examples of how we're applying engineering to the work that we do. And so, you know, looking forward to any questions you might have about that, but a question I get very frequently is just how can you help? And the first step is just being educated. You know, well, money always helps, but being educated and understanding what the problem is and helping others to understand it is our first step and even be able to make any sort of inroads to make these efforts feasible in the first place. And also, if you're an engineer and you wanna help out, send me an email. It's something that, you know, send me a paragraph of how you think you could be beneficial. You know, I've always come across problems that I don't have the expertise on how to do it and I need experts to support to make this happen. So thank you all for listening, looking forward to any questions you may have, looking forward to Carol's questions and well, thank you all for being here today. Thank you Miles for that presentation. Thank you Miles for that presentation. I'm looking forward to the discussions and now pass it on to our forest speaker, Tiamy Rajic and he is director of the Senegal of Flying Labs. He has more than 20 years of experience working in the international development sector. His background is in business strategy and information systems from the International Institute of Management in Las Vegas and holds a master's degree in computer science from the University of California. Tiamy is also the founder and CEO of CRAMP, a Senegalese social enterprise that develops concepts of collecting, sharing and using data with drones to stimulate change. So over to you, Tiamy. Thank you very much, Caroline. Can everybody hear me well? We can, we can hear you. Super. All right, my name, my name is Tiamy Rajic. As Caroline said, I don't think I will show and produce myself anymore. I wanted to share a presentation. Can I do that? Yes, go ahead. All right, can you share my screen? Can you all see my screen? Yes, we can. Thank you very, very much. Right, so my name is Tiamy Rajic. I'm the director of Senegal of Flying Labs. We have a link down there if you want to know more about what we do as a Flying Lab and a Senegal Flying Lab. You might want to just check on the website so they link that. It's down there. Thank you. So this is exactly what Caroline said about me, but she's really not about me at this moment. We really want to share more about what we're doing and how we're going about it. Senegal Flying Lab, just a snapshot of who we are, what we do. The activities we do, this is a very important slide for everyone to see. We do three major activities at Senegal Flying Lab. We develop local capacity, local skills by introducing drone technology to organization professionals, universities across the region, not necessarily Senegal. We do it across the region. We are leading most of the discussions and implementation ideas and concepts in the region. We also do, as rightly put there, we organize projects. We organize what we call in our concept the pilot project. Pilot projects are much more about testing out, working with engineers, university student partners to be able to test out some things in many sectors, being agriculture, conservation, health, NEMI. We are hoping to listen to ideas and try to make them happen and see how technologies and science can get together to make things, to give us a better environment. And thirdly, we encourage others to get into the technology world, particularly the drone world, by trying to train youth so that they can create opportunities to practice and support our communities. I wanted to share really one of the activities we do. We have done it with the Ministry of Environment. We have a lot of partners in Senegal and around the region. It's to help the Ministry of Environment introduce the drone technology, the work that they do. Luckily enough, we have good relationship with the particular department, the conservation department, and then we've been able to train some of their staff to kind of like do what they need to do to help their community, to make their work better by using drone technology and AI. So this is a particular use case that I wanted to share with the audience today. As you can see here, we actually was in touch with the Ministry to be able to help during the international you know, conservations and counting of water beds. They call them water beds. They have a methodology that they use to be able to do that. And then we thought that was important for us to get in touch with them and see how we can use the drone technology, maybe, to help them to, instead of doing estimation that they normally do using their methodology, to use the AI and the drone technology to actually have accurate data for program, for policy making so that they will be able to get their information right. So this was a program we identified first challenges. First of all, some major reports around the globe actually said that there is a low reliability on the bed population estimation and accessibility around the globe, particularly in our region in Seneca. So together with the Ministry, we thought of trying to contribute to how we can make this counting accurate. And a part of many other things we do with them, this was one of the important activity. So we wanted to make sure we have the reliable counting results instead of estimation. So the Ministry of Environment agrees to this, particularly the National Department of Parks and the Director of Marine Protection also was involved in this. And as you can see here, it's actually linking to the SDG 13 and 15. So how did we go about it? We set up a clear strategy and a methodology to be able to get this done. So we have two prior teams to be able to run this project. One team that was using the initial standards methodology that they used to do this counting on the international counting day. Then the second one was to use the technology and AI to do the same work. Then at the end of the day, we compare the two data and then try to see how accurate their methodology is and how accurate the methodology that we are bringing in also have to improve the quality of the job. So we had a previous date on this side, have some planning and data acquisition methodology and the processings and analysis of the data that is collected. The results were just straightforward. We used the AI with one of the partners that love this AI. We flew the drone around the areas while the team was doing their standard methodology. We did our flight, tried to compare many, many things. We can share the data use case with you guys if you are interested in getting more information on this. We have gone through a whole process to make sure that this is accurate enough so that we can compare the two methodologies. So we use the drone technology and then the AI application. As you can see from this image, it's a short video to be able to tell you. I'm not sure if we're supposed to have audio. Tiam, you, it's not coming through. You cannot hear the audio? All right, okay. So I'll probably share this video for those who are interested in it. The objective for this video was really to show you what we did. We were focusing on two major activities during this project. The first one was to help counting, but the second one also was to help the Minister of the Department team to be able to access some sites, to visit some sites, some sites that were inaccessible to them, normally when they are doing their work. So we wanted to bring this technology in to be able to also, while doing the project on conservation and counting beds and assessing data from various little islands around the areas in Senegal, it was difficult for them because they put their life in danger to be able to do some work. So at the end of the day, we wanted to solve this problem. I must be honest that my team was the one who work on this project. Two ladies, particularly Mati and Ajah, were the one really leading this project together with Claude. And that is it from my side. So if you have any questions, I'll be able to answer them. Thank you. Thank you very much, Tiam, and everyone for their presentation. I'm excited now to go over asking questions to you and interacting with the four of you. So I'll start with very general questions. And the first one, I think a lot of our community are engineers or young engineers that want to get into this space. I think I can speak to myself that I never knew that I could apply in here for conservation. So I want to ask you what is the role of technologists or engineers in conservation efforts from your perspective? And then what are key actions and partnerships that could advance that participation of engineers for conservation efforts? So I think I could start with Cassie and then go around table around the other speakers. Sure. You know, the engineers at Conservation Next Labs say the same thing that a lot of them were kind of on a trajectory to go work at a big engineering firm or consulting firm or, I don't know, even weapons company, to be honest, before they had the realization that they could potentially work in the conservation field. And I mean, I think it's something that's like growing and new and less new but growing. And there actually are a lot of conservation organizations looking for engineers and technologists these days. Just, I mean, advertising for them outright. But I think there are a lot of conservation organizations do different types of monitoring for better decision making. And I do think there is a lot of work that people who want to get into the field can do to basically identify a specific organization that you might want to work with and see really what their conservation goals and targets are and what they're actually monitoring on the ground or what process they're trying to improve. And then there usually are ways, and I think everyone kind of gave an example of how engineering is either making a process more efficient or using new computational tools to gather insights more quickly or more accurately. So really trying to partner your alley yourself with a conservation organization, getting to know their particular problem on the ground. And then I think there are ways to, like I said, make it more efficient and look for specific projects that can kind of demonstrate that efficiency and how it can influence decision making. And I should say like how the efficiency will improve decision making because there are frequently ways in which people go for getting these better efficiencies that might not actually improve decision making at the end of the day. So finding out what's actually necessary and we'll make a difference. Thank you, Cassie. I would now like to pass it on to you Nandini in your organization's name. We've been in touch for a while now. So thank you. The roots of why it was created and now the role that you think your team is playing in conservation. Sure, thanks. I will try my best to answer that. And I echo a lot of the thoughts that Cassie also mentioned. So we really believe that technology amplifies underlying motives and intentions that exist and exist in any field. And I think that if a motivation was conservation, that technology could really be used for making it more effective and scalable. So that's kind of our thought process of using tech if and when appropriate for our own projects. But more broadly, I think that the role of technologists in conservation is honestly just to, I think the most meaningful thing that they could do is engage meaningfully with the conservation sector. Right now, most projects from the conservation space generally adapt the existing equipment or programs as best as possible for conservation needs a lot of the time. But to have research to develop for conservation needs and to have equipment of that sort would be really powerful. And by engaging in a meaningful way, I mean not only in terms of what specs are required for a certain equipment, but also really understanding goals and motivations and seeing field conditions and also the users in our everyday life, the apps that we use are so user friendly and easy. And if we could have that sort of thing for conservation needs, that's so powerful because that's dictating what we as a global community want to use technology for and democratizing it in a way, but also putting out our intentions of what we want to use our skill sets for. So for example, like a lot of field sites have no network need applications that could be used in regional languages have to be adapted for different species. So having things that are open source adaptable to different environments and also free or cost friendly is really important. And as individuals engaging, I completely agree with Cassie that I think at this point it's not just biologists, but every skill set is really valuable in the conservation space. So there's definitely some organization or space that already exists or that you can create to contribute that way. Thank you Nandini. I would like then to pass the question to Miles, you interact every day with biologists that you need to be constantly translating what they have in their minds and their research to usable products. So what is your answer to the role of an engineer there? Yeah, thanks Kero. I would just start that by when I started three years ago I think other than the Australian Institute of Marine Science, I was the only engineer that I knew that was working in coral restoration full time. And the role that we play that I mean technology in general plays for any sort of conservation effort as particularly us is upscaling. Currently everything in coral restoration is done with PVC and zip ties and is built in people's backyards and it breaks every year and they have to rebuild it and that's not a scalable, that's not a sustainable solution is that we're facing. And so just those key actions are figuring modes of doing this work that do not create that waste, do not that are going to be long lasting but also multiply the work that is being done by those individuals. The current largest cost in coral restoration is the amount of human labor that it takes to get a single coral onto the reef. And those key partnerships, you can law the softball for us here, engineering for change, incredible. Like just getting people involved when they're young, understanding those challenges that exist but then also working with those local stakeholders to understand the local challenges that exist and building things in a way that work with those local stakeholders reefs and that they know better than anyone else does. And so supporting them bringing in the next generation but also recognizing that all of this knowledge out there that engineering in general possesses and can provide can be applied to these conservation challenges just figuring out how to leverage them. And as you said, and just to wrap it up translating it into a way that our scientists can focus on the science and our engineers can focus on those big problem solving issues. And so we can work at the same time interdisciplinarily to find solutions. Thank you, Miles. And now I think I would go over to you, Tim. I know that we robotics has been working towards changing the view of drones and their ethical use through different lenses like the one you presented as ecorabotics. So how are you seeing that transfer of the perspective of the use of drones in your contribution to local stakeholders in conservation? Thank you very much, Teri Kawaii. Can you hear me? We can hear you, yes. Thank you very much. Yeah, in fact, as you rightly said, as Fly Lab, the role we are playing and the importance of the role we are playing is because first of all, we know our communities better. We know our countries. As you know, we are more than 33 Fly Labs around the globe, but particularly there's in the south of the continent. The objective is to be able to bring these technologies, this knowledge, this use case, which is happening really in the south across the globe because we all have the same challenges. We have even difficulties, access to technology, access to knowledge. So we've been able to turn things around. Now, we realize that our country's decision makers, institutions, class, the work we are doing, class us, and count on us to be able to continue providing advice. So when it comes to our work with the Ministry of Environment, particularly the Department in charge of conservation, it's really an opportunity for us to not only work with them in Senegal, but it can also take the work we are doing with them across the region when they go to seminars and workshops across the continent. And one of the things we've been able to do today is to introduce the drone technology, submarine drone technology, area drone technology, but not to do the work for them, but to rather train them on data collection, data analysis, and how they can use the data for action to take decision. And this has really, really, really improved the way they look at use of technology formally, not to really point out to anyone. They used to work with partners across the globe, coming from the US, from Europe, from Syria. But most of the time, when the data is collected, the data is taken out of the continent, the data is analyzed out there with the partners and universities, then the results are back on the continent with reports, images, but they don't have assets in the raw data. Today, it's easy for them to call on us locally for us to support them and encourage them, particularly to let them do the work for themselves so that it can be sustainable. And this is the role of Fly Labs. And that was something that we know what this is defending. And we are really defending it ourselves because it's easy for me, I'm speaking to you right now from Kenya. I'm talking to you from Nairobi. I came all the way here to support my colleagues in the East African region. So just to tell you how important our work is being considered and used across the continent. Thank you, TM. And if I can say something that's true of all of you is that you are working towards disseminating these technologies and making them useful for more and more people. And I think the other point that you were talking about, TM is that of the use of these technologies or these data for decision-making. And there's this other role of us as engineers or technologies and using this for a greater purpose. So I'd like to ask Nandini that you also work on data collection. How can we leverage that data that you're collecting to strengthen that science policy interface that TM also referenced to support sustainable ecosystem management? Thanks, Marina. I also just want to briefly mention before I answer your question that Technology for Wildlife Foundation is also the conservation partner for India Flying Labs. And we also had been working on re-robotics program like research on ethical use of drones. So I just want to say we also feel really strongly about that. It's nice to speak with people. Through your question, Marina, I think in order to make the science policy interface more effective for ecosystem management, I think the first step is really to begin that engagement before the data is even collected to understand who is really interested in it and who can use this data. And to be able to speak with them before that process begins to understand other questions that they have, other variables that you could collect in addition to the ones you're interested in yourself that could maybe meet more needs or make people who could really implement the analysis that you do to make that research more meaningful and for them to be more accepting and open to it as well. So honestly, I think part of it is that a lot of the questions that we pose need to be also more democratically or more relevant to the use of it since all of our aim is conservation impact. And after that, the analysis I feel like is of course extremely important, like what we're choosing to, the questions we're choosing to ask and how we're choosing to analyze it, but that bit I feel like generally people are quite good at. The other bit after the questions is again, a little bit of a struggle sometimes is that we communicating what we collect effectively of really being able to translate that analysis into forms for different stakeholders in a way that makes sense for them and can be used effectively. And are we engaging enough outside of just doing the data analysis to be able to share it with those who need that information and can make that change? So I think for me, that's very important but for leveraging data for science and policy and making it more effective. Thank you, Nendini and I would like to remind our audience that that is not available, but if you want to ask questions, you can ask through the Q&A box. And I think building on our conversation of disseminating or collaborating with what you produce through your projects, I would like to now explore that concept of collaboration which I also see very present in all your work with you, Cassie, that you do a lot of co-creation. So I want to ask you how, what does co-creation with conservation partners looks like for CXL? And how do you look for opportunities to ensure fair, effective, inclusive and transpired participation of the different stakeholders across? Yeah, I know that's a great question. And I mean, it's something we've really thought a lot about as we've ran this mining challenge in the Amazon because we've both wanted to really encourage people who live in the region and are close to the problem and understand the problem to want to put forward solutions to address the challenge while also really leveraging other talent and insights and technologies from outside of the region as well. And so I think there's like a few things that Conservation X Labs does and that I think like the space needs generally that was touched on earlier. One, when we like choose problems to work on and go to set out an open innovation competition, I mean, we do like wide amounts of like consultation and trying to like really understand, what are the issues at heart? Hold a lot of like what we call our little things. So it's like really inviting people close and near to the problem to understand like the heart of what the constraints and barriers are to change. And so really involving people from like an early stage on problem definition. So I think that also helps further down the line to developing things that are useful and meet user needs or stakeholder needs. And it's also an early engagement process kind of inviting people to go along the like the product development, innovation solution development process. I think one of the things we've probably struggled a little bit with is some of this because we've been running global competitions, it can be hard to engage on a really local level around the world. And so and it just takes time and resources and reaching people at the last mile. I mean, that's really a matter of going to meet them where they're at and we can't do that all the time everywhere. But I do think when we scope like open innovation competition there's we've been working to more intentionally build in these beneficiaries, stakeholder and user feedback and partnering opportunities. So if a challenge is really an experiment to see if an innovation technology or product is gonna work and potentially have impact, how can we engage people in a meaningful way to really go into testing those solutions before any thought is really given? Well, not no thought, but until it's really activated to try to think about scaling a solution. And then the only other thing I was gonna say because it was touched on I've with a lot of people work in the space where it's like we're like there's the conservationists and then there's the engineers and there is probably a Venn diagram where people who really are working very fluidly in both spaces or have both of these backgrounds. But I do think there probably is a need for more intermediaries and really valuing those intermediaries that can help both spec out and speak the language of engineers but then also I mean international development uses its own language for better or for worse that can be very limiting. Like I was so immersed in it for so long that I like you don't even realize it. So I do think it's not only like learning to talk to but I do think it's just like a role that should be valued like be it a product manager or a product program manager but really helping those people also facilitate it. And it sounds like a lot of the people on this call play that role. Thank you, Kathy. I think I would like to move on your point on that part of the transferring techniques and I would like to ask you Miles because this is something that's very important for Sequa's work. If you can speak a bit about the transfer of technology that you currently do and how you currently do it with your local partners and some business learn why is that so important for Sequa's work? Absolutely. Thanks, Carol and just to piggyback off Cassie there I completely agree with that that it is a challenge in itself to be able to facilitate both directions of that Venn diagram and being able to do that effectively is a huge benefit to all players involved. But with respect to the transfer of technology our Sequa's implementation program we work with partner organizations providing them the training materials, tools to build a sustainable restoration program for themselves. We don't see ourselves as the people putting on the clover on the reefs. And the goal is that at the end of this five year capacity building program they can not only teach others to do the work but they also have a program that is gonna function until their restoration goals are met whether that's funding or finding the funding or doing the executing the work finding the people. And this is just so important to Sequa's mission because as I said we don't intend to be the ones restoring those reefs and we believe this is like it's a sustainable and equitable way to build capacity with these local partners who know their reefs and their communities like best. And so it's just incredibly important to recognize that local knowledge but also recognize that we can support that local knowledge with better understanding of those coral species how to do the larval propagation but then also the tools that can make it so it's not so labor and labor intensive and they're able to do more effectively with the time and the resources that they do have. Thank you. Thank you Miles for that answer. I think given the time that we have I will ask some of the two questions we have in the Q and A. I think the first one I could ask it to you Nandini you were talking a bit about the different user experiences that you usually need to go through when you have a new pilot. So we have these a question from Chandri Kharash she says here she says I'm curious about the need for UX researchers in these fields especially those with tech background what would be your answer to that? So I think it's again it's very use case dependent so again having solutions that are open source and adaptable is always really helpful but I think UX actually would play a really useful role especially in data collection. Just as like some of the examples I can give you is there's marine standings that happen along the coast of Goa where we are at and the first responders are lifeguards and they speak two different regional languages and part of what we were thinking about is this apps of if they were trying to document what happens and a lot of it happens right now over different media but if that were to happen you ideally want something that has minimal words allows them a scale to look at it and be able to document the whole process maybe allows for it to happen without network access and for all of it to be able to automatically go to vets who need first respondents but really that's one use case another use case is for a dry deciduous like forest but again with no network and for completely different species and for a different regional language so for me like the key is like really being able to keep it open so that people who are doing the interface can adapt it to needs but the UX plays a huge role I think in how usable it is because a lot of times the tech is developed maybe without enough engagement with the users and it doesn't end up being used and it's you know so that's not what we're looking for I don't know if that answers your question Thank you Nandini I see a thumbs up so maybe it was answered now I would like to do like your round question to answer Jess question she says what is the best way to start a career in international development or conservation what opportunities are valued in the industry and she says this is from a marine mechanical engineer great webinar by the way I think I'll start with you, Tiam and then over to you Kathy and then at the end Miles again Tiam the question is what is the best way you can start a career in this sector what is your answer to that? I think one of the things that comes in my first of all is to be able to be willing to contribute to you know the SDGs that are related to conservation and biodiversity engineers are really really really doing already great jobs so if you want to start a career probably you should try as much as you can to get in touch with you know us or anybody else on this panel and see how we can first of all give you the opportunity if you are interested in coming to Africa don't know where you are right now then we will give you opportunity to support our work because we need engineers, we need technology we need you know researchers to come help us to be able to sustainably introduce technology introduce, break the barriers of science so that you know our conservation department and industry will be able to buy into this just to quickly emphasize that in Africa there's a lot of work to do we are supposed to be helping them to do the work very well and do it by introducing the technologies that can support them to achieve their objective but also making sure that we don't bring technologies that will really disrupt and contribute to what we are fighting against so drone technology has been key to this we use them, we use the data that this technology collects and then they can help them to to really anticipate on something that can happen we operate in many sectors we help you know with regard to you know the conservation with regard to management of these sites in Senegal so if you want to really put your you know start somewhere maybe you should speak with us okay thank you Tia for that I I think I could mention I'm part of the Panama flying labs actually joining from our offices here in Panama and it's in my bucket list to once do a project with the East Africa hubs so I do encourage people to look for your local flying labs if there's any it's nearby and then explore other projects in other flying labs hubs um I would pass it on to you Tia to speak from your perspective how can someone like just start this journey in conservation did you say me or yeah okay go ahead yeah no I was going to say I think the one of the exciting things is that there's more and more funding going to ocean conservation right now so um um might be on a bit of a boon here to get a new job um but so like I said the actual engineering jobs posted might be like far and few between though you know you can always look look out for those but I mean I would really look at some of those new and upcoming ocean conservation organizations like the ocean concert conservancy the Schmitt marine technology partners has a ton of interesting product projects and products that they fund but like look for the products and projects that you want to work on and like go pitch yourself first like waiting for that job opening because I mean it really is I mean I think these conservation organizations are still figuring out how to engage engineers and like so going to present yourself is going to give you a leg up like I'm interested can I find something um and then the if you're feeling more optimal there are also lots of new like challenges and innovation competitions coming out in this space and like it might be bringing an idea which might be scarier overwhelming or not where you're at but then these competitions also usually facilitate ways to join teams and like engineering skills are usually highly valued and that's just another more optimal way that you could consider um and that's my advice at least at this time so good luck I'm sure you'll make a big difference thank you Cassie and I think well since you're related to the ocean and you have a shark be sure to even um I would ask you what what would you recommend to yes and but also what are you most excited about or promising in your with someone like Jess that would like to start absolutely but first John uh you know we're secours currently in in we are hoping to be expanding our capacity building programs to your continent as well so hopefully we'll we'll see you someday in the future um second uh to answer Jess's question you know I have always said that in the school of engineering I learned how to learn and I went out into the working world I worked for an engineering consulting firm and there I learned how the how the design process worked how to manage a project how to work with a vendor how to under like just make the design work the manufacturing stuff uh process how to make those things happen how to iterate on that recognizing how that whole process functions you can learn a lot about it in the school of engineering but you don't really understand it until you do it and so you know yes there's not as Cassie said there's not many straight up engineering jobs that are going to exist in this world currently um and so it might be like I did going out and getting the experience of working for another large company and then you can take those skills you know defining exactly what those skills are that's a whole much longer conversation feel free to follow up with me if you would like more in depth on that because I've got some opinions um but in general as Cassie said there is in the three years that I've been doing chloro restoration there is by far way more spending money going into this uh discipline you know the fact that the United Nations dedicated this decade the ocean decade is you know by far the US government is spending a lot of money on ocean conservation you know albeit right now it's more in terms of protecting naval bases and stuff like that but it's still putting money into developing technologies that can be used for coastal protection which is restoration of coral reefs coral reefs attenuate wave energy protect our coastlines support like help keep our our community safe and so getting out getting the experience I love Cassie's point of just asking people about it talking about it you know putting yourself out there selling yourself that is the best that you can do is making the effort to show that you are interested if you have the interest and the energy and the motivation you will find something that will work for you um you just got you got to do it um and we we need your help I if I had an open position I'd send you the job posting but I don't have that right now because we're still working on finding the funding but rest assured there will be more opportunities more and more is coming out um for until you find it work on getting experience that's applicable and can be used um which is just getting out and working understanding what the real world is um if you're just coming out of school if you're not you're doing a great job already thank you Miles and I do encourage chair one to continue on Miles uh of her of the universe of corals which is very interesting I may say uh um but then yeah go ahead and I make one more quick plug real quick there is the coral restoration consortium I chair the engineering and innovation group which it's a community of practice of restoration practitioners that are trying to connect with engineers or manufacturers or just other industries to support scaling and coral restoration if you have any interest in it I'd love to uh get you in contact uh and and just reach out to me um I'm sure my contact info is on the website or we will send it out if it's not um but yeah can use all of you thank you Miles and I would like then to pass it on uh to you as the last marks uh look into the future what exciting more about the work that tech for life for wildlife is doing and what is more most promising in the field that you're at um thanks Carol um it's a big question I um honestly I think I'm really excited about this conversation has been really inspiring and I think maybe that's related to what I'm excited about is like more partnerships and collaborations because honestly I think all the skill sets are really out there and a lot of it is making those linkages um some of the most exciting things in our specific projects have happened because of collaborations we've had with research labs with people from the industry sometimes not even like from conservation so um being able to make those connections finding common aligned goals and working on that together that's something I'm really excited about um they're working like with the project that I always spoke to you guys about we're working with the lab to use computer vision to maybe identify the species and automate that to make our data processing more efficient and then maybe one day in the future to be able to use that uh to get that live feedback as we are operating the drone so that we can we know when we've seen an animal and attract that live but that's like one specific use case but I just meant like as an example of being able to make partnerships of NGOs with um like research labs but even beyond that of people who are interested um whether you're in the field or sector or an industry lab or an individual and maybe even connecting with if it were possible with um grant giving organizations and the grantees that receive it and are on the ground like those kind of like sustained partnerships to allow for communication of what needs are and matching the skill sets honestly that bit is really exciting for me it seems like there's it feels like there's more um hope and dedication um proceedings happen and I hope it translates thank you very much Nandini and to everyone all the panelists it has been a pleasure to have in this discussion with all of you I'd admire all of your work I wish I could uh contribute to everything so it's it's so exciting to see what you are up to and I hope that the people in the audience got excited as well reaches out or even just considers the possibility of contributing in some way to conservation I'll pass it on now to Iana for us some closing remarks thank you thank you Carolina and of course thank you to an all panelists I I would be remiss if I did not also uh jump on the question that was asked regarding how to get involved um as I noted at the beginning one of the pathways is through programs such as our engineering for change fellowship that we host annually both in the summer and winter uh which Carolina actually was a part of as a fellow and um how she connected um also to a number of the programs that um and organizations that are here including secor our fellows have worked with flying labs as well as conservation x labs uh this is exactly the work that we do in helping you build your skills and expose you to the opportunities across the sustainable development sector whether conservation or um electrification of the openings the pathways are in fact limitless so we we encourage you to look uh on our site follow us on social media so you can see announcements about fellowship openings as well as also for those of you who already have experience take a look at our opportunities portal where we post jobs as well as volunteer opportunities with a diverse set of organizations globally who are all unified in their mission to achieve the sustainable development goals again I want to extend a thank you to our incredible panel your passion and commitment is evident it comes through the zoom uh we're so thankful for the time you've taken out of your busy days to spend with us to educate us um to show us everything uh that is magical in your world including those um well I forgot what they're called the little uh eggs that go with my eggs the baby corals I am not a marine biologist eggs are fine you know they exist that's the important thing that was beautiful it was magical I just can't remember the name but uh I do know that they go into the cribs and I thought that was rather apropos as an acronym so with that I I want to wish everybody a good day good morning good evening depending where you are from and we look to see you again on our next webinar and thank you again to you all for spending some time with us have a good one take care thank you thank you so much thank you so much