Engineers for Exploration (E4E) brings together students, scientists and explorers to build technologies that help us see – and hear – the planet in new ways. From coral reefs to coastal surf zones to the forests of the Amazon, E4E develops innovative computer systems that close critical gaps in conservation and exploration. Collaborating with partners such as the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, The Nature Conservancy and the National Geographic Society, these projects move beyond the lab and into the field, where they are already shaping how researchers understand fragile ecosystems.

This colloquium will spotlight two projects, SmartFin and Acoustic Species Detection, that ask a deceptively simple question: What happens when we give nature new ways to speak to us, and new ways for us to listen?

___

Ryan Kastner leads the Kastner Research Group, and his current research interests are broad but generally fall into three areas: hardware acceleration, hardware security, and remote sensing. He is the co-director of the Wireless Embedded Systems Graduate Program – a specialized Master’s degree targeting individuals working in local industries. He co-founded and co-directs the Engineers for Exploration (E4E) program, which partners with archaeologists, biologists, ecologists, and marine scientists to create unique embedded computing systems to further their scientific research. Technologies developed by E4E were featured in the 2020 National Geographic docuseries “Ancient China from Above.” E4E has involved hundreds of undergraduates over the past decade and has operated as a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduate site since 2013. Professor Kastner has been working in the hardware security space for over 15 years, including projects on Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) security, 3D integrated circuit security, and hardware information flow tracking. He is the co-founder of Cycuity, which develops hardware security verification solutions. He is an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellow “for contributions to the design and security of reconfigurable systems.”

The SmartFin is an open-source oceanographic sensor-equipped surfboard fin with temperature, motion and wet/dry sensing; GPS location; and cellular data transmission capabilities for the near-real-time monitoring of coastal physics and environmental parameters. Many well-established observational techniques are expensive, require complex technical training, and offer little to no public engagement; SmartFin was designed to alleviate these issues. The technology is a useful scientific research tool in the coastal ocean—especially for observing spatiotemporal variability, validating remotely sensed data, and characterizing surface water depth profiles.

Passive acoustic monitoring deploys low-cost, low-energy audio recorders to understand ecosystems based on their sounds. For example, E4E's recent work with National Geographic uses underwater audio recordings to assess the health and restoration of coral reefs. E4E also has a long-standing research project with the San Diego Zoo to study the Peruvian Amazon using soundscape recordings. The Acoustic Species Detection project assists conservation researchers in using audio recorders by developing machine-learning algorithms to detect species, assess ecosystem health and understand anthropological interactions.