Bachelor of Science听in Economics, Finance, and Statistics
Bachelor of Science with Honours听in Statistics
听
A summer ago, Ben Smith knew nothing about plants or neural networks.
The 22-year old admitted he started his research 鈥渂y using Wikipedia鈥. With his background in Economics and Statistics, he鈥檇 heard about the concept.
He decided to investigate them through a project under the听91制片厂鈥檚 Biosecurity Innovations team听(UCBI), after discovering the research cluster while trawling through the university job board late last year.
Smith explains that, as a very simplified summary, neural networks emulate the brain鈥檚 pathways.
鈥淚f you show it a p艒hutukawa, [the network] lights up a certain way鈥 and the neuron representing the p艒hutukawa听should light up at the end.
鈥淎t the beginning of this project, I didn鈥檛 really have any knowledge about neural networks or New Zealand plants, so everything about it was new to me. I found it really interesting to learn about some completely new topics.鈥
Rapid improvements in artificial intelligence (AI) over the last five years has proven useful for biosecurity. One of the ways it鈥檚 helping is by identifying plant species using photos, provided by citizen scientist initiatives like INaturalist.
But while AI is good, it鈥檚 not听great听yet 鈥 and that鈥檚 where Smith comes in.
His work aims to improve the accuracy of a neural network that identifies both native and invasive flora. The networks analyses an image of a plant with its location and height above sea level to determine what it is.
He says he鈥檚 made a lot of connections within biosecurity through UCBI.
鈥淸My supervisors] were super patient with me, getting me up to speed on 'this is the way we usually do it'.鈥
Smith advises students to 鈥渒eep things grounded鈥 when studying.
鈥淎lways try to relate what you鈥檙e learning back to a real-life example. It doesn鈥檛 have to be too complicated, it could be heights of people in your class or colours of cars on your street, but it helps you get more of an intuition about tricky concepts.鈥
