Monitoring Biodiversity with Noelia Jiménez Martínez from NatureMetrics

Biodiversity is not just an ecological concern. As you’ll learn in this episode, it has tangible economic implications too. Today on Impact AI, I'm joined by Dr. Noelia Jimenez Martinez, Head of Insights and Machine Learning at NatureMetrics, to talk about biodiversity monitoring. NatureMetrics is a global nature intelligence technology company providing end-to-end nature monitoring and impact reporting. Powered by eDNA, their Nature Intelligence Platform allows any company to manage its impacts and dependencies on biodiversity at scale, translating the complexities of nature into simple insights that help to inform the best decisions for both the planet and business. Tuning in, you’ll learn about the importance of NatureMetrics’ work, the role that machine learning plays in their technology, and some of the challenges that come with working with sometimes unpredictable data from nature. In my conversation with Noelia, we also touched on why biodiversity is an increasingly urgent imperative for businesses of all kinds, how NatureMetrics is democratizing biodiversity monitoring, and much more!

Key Points:

• Insight into Noelia's background in astrophysics and how it led her to NatureMetrics.
• What NatureMetrics does, what eDNA is, and why it’s so important for sustainability.
• The major role that machine learning plays in NatureMetrics' technology.
• Specific examples of the types of models that NatureMetrics trains.
• How Jurassic Park helps us understand what eDNA data looks like.
• Different ways that this data is gathered depending on the relevant project.
• Unique challenges of sampling for eDNA and training models based on those datasets.
• How NatureMetrics measures the impact of its technology and makes biodiversity monitoring more accessible and achievable.
• Noelia’s urgent and common sense advice for other leaders of AI-powered startups.
• What the future holds for NatureMetrics and how their impact will continue to grow.

Quotes:

“I couldn't focus too much on solving galaxy formation with the amount of bad news I was seeing in the climate space and biodiversity collapse. I made a transition – [to] looking for jobs to apply [my astrophysics skills to] related problems in climate and biodiversity.” — Noelia Jiménez Martínez

“Nature does not seem to behave [as well] as we would want. It might be that you have exactly the same covariates and your model is predicting species, and then you go, and it's not there.” — Noelia Jiménez Martínez

“[Most companies] will have to report on their sustainability strategies in the world to keep on functioning. In that context, what we can do here is make biodiversity monitoring achievable and democratically easy to access.” — Noelia Jiménez Martínez

“The success of [an AI startup is] – tied up to the diverse, strong teams you build.” — Noelia Jiménez Martínez

Links:

NatureMetrics

Dr. Noelia Jiménez Martínez on LinkedIn

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