Jake Tan is a PhD student in the Department of Oceanography at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada. His professional experience and research interests span cybersecurity, data science, artificial intelligence and marine conservation. He earned his MSc in Geographical Information Systems from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, in 2020, where he utilized deep learning and other machine learning methods to identify and map new and existing coastal saltmarshes using multispectral and synthetic aperture radar satellite data.  

Part of the Seascape Ecology & Mapping (SEAM) lab headed by Dr Craig Brown since 2021, Jake’s interdisciplinary research is co-supervised by Dr Thomas Trappenberg from the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie. His PhD research centers on the effective application of cutting-edge artificial intelligence techniques to improve seafloor and benthic habitat characterization. Specific areas of focus include leveraging the automated feature learning capabilities of deep neural networks to improve current mapping workflows, and using tailored neural network architectures to extract integrated information from disparate data streams. Jake aims to apply his research to supporting ecologists and geologists in advancing ocean science to better inform ocean conservation and sustainable marine resource use. 

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