🦟 Identification of disease carrying Mosquitoes 🦟

Moskeet are a company helping tackle the spread of all mosquito borne diseases through developing a Machine Learning tool to automatically classify trapped mosquito species by the sound of their flight. Why does this help? Well, out of the roughly 3200 species of mosquito, only a few carry diseases that cause humans harm. Moskeet have peppered the world with boxes which automatically capture and record the sounds of active mosquitoes in the area. This allows for a smart reponse to the various mosquito-related diseases as efforts can be targeted to areas of high prevalence of dangerous mosquitoes. It also allows teams to tailor species specific insecticide, causing less damage to the local ecosystem and to optimise effectiveness.

I have recently agreed to work with Moskeet on the project of mosquito classification from audio, with the aim of boosting their classification scores using cutting edge deep learning techniques. This is currently taking the form of supervising a Masters Student, Roopa D. Antony, who’s Thesis will be on the subject.