The COpé new scientific animator, Camille Coux, introduces herself to you

I joined the FRB as a data scientist at Cesab in January 2023. Based in Montpellier, I am also in charge of the scientific animation of the IA-Biodiv Challenge. My role in this challenge is to act as a link between the three projects and the COpé in order to promote exchanges and the matching of needs and expectations of each. The challenge of the Challenge is to get AI researchers to collaborate with ecology researchers, and these are fields that still have a lot to learn from each other! With an academic background in ecology, I have since become interested in data science and AI. I am therefore at the interface of these disciplines, and I look forward to working with Challenge members to help generate new insights to catalyse our understanding of biodiversity and guide ecosystem conservation measures.

My other tasks include collaborating with Cesab’s research groups to develop tools to address analytical and methodological issues for their research questions. Being a generalist, I enjoy working simultaneously on very different themes. I like problems that appear at the frontiers of disciplinary fields and I try to have an integrative approach, which tackles the same question from different perspectives. This is why my two functions at the FRB are mutually enriching!

Before the FRB, I did…

• A PhD on the structure of food webs, incorporating functional ecology indices along environmental gradients. I graduated in 2016 from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.
• A post-doctoral fellowship on biological control mechanisms in agroecosystems, between INRAE Bordeaux-Aquitaine and the Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé.
• A mission in the Cybèle Planète association, to analyse and assess the data collected within the largest participative science programme in the marine environment in France, Cybèle Méditerranée, in Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone.
• Training in data science, machine learning and deep learning at EPSI in Montpellier.

If I were a sea animal, I would be…

An octopus! Because I find these atypical, intelligent animals fascinating, and they have remarkable camouflage abilities. They often play a pivotal role in ecosystems, as they are both prey and predators, and occupy different trophic positions depending on the ecosystems in which they live.