Irina Tolkova
My goal is to develop practical, robust, adaptable tools to provide high-quality data for informing wildlife conservation efforts.
I am now a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cornell K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at Cornell University. I completed bachelor’s degrees in applied mathematics and computer science at the University of Washington, followed by a PhD in applied mathematics at Harvard, where I worked on optimization, machine learning, and robotics.
My current research focuses on automated passive acoustic monitoring, with an emphasis on sound source separation and localization using microphone and hydrophone arrays. I'm very interested in expanding to other forms of conservation technology, and am also curious about broader computational methods towards sustainability and social impact.
If you'd like to talk, please feel free to reach me at itolkova [at] cornell [dot] edu!
Research
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Marine BioacousticsHow can we detect, locate, and count whales with arrays of hydrophones? -
Terrestrial BioacousticsHow can we improve passive monitoring of birds and other vocal animals through integrating principles across physical acoustics, array processing, and machine learning?
In the news
- Neural network helps detect gunshots from illegal rainforest poaching
- Scientists and Inupiaq hunters count bowhead whales. So far, the numbers seem to be on the rise.
- Counting whales by eavesdropping on their chatter, with help from machine learning
- New study advances acoustic monitoring of endangered whale
