Thijs L van der Plas

Hello! I’m Thijs, an AI researcher passionate about developing machine learning methods to tackle major challenges in ecological and biological sciences. My academic journey started with a background in physics at Radboud University, the Netherlands (MSc, 2019, BSc 2016), followed by a DPhil in computational neuroscience at the University of Oxford (2023). My neuroscience research largely focused on developing statistical and machine learning techniques to understand how high-dimensional brain activity is organised and can learn to represent sensory stimuli, and using this to investigate cognitive functions such as perception.

During the final year of my PhD, I worked with the Peak District to develop a high-resolution land cover map of this National Park, initially through the Turing internship network and later as a Data Scientist. I then joined the Alan Turing Institute as a Research Associate, where I develop methods that are able to integrate remote sensing imagery with citizen-science wildlife observations to predict biodiversity in the UK. My work involves close collaboration with the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and contributes to the Turing’s Environment & Sustainability Grand Challenge.

In April 2025, I will join the AI group of Wageningen University & Research, the Netherlands, as a postdoctoral researcher to join LTER-LIFE, a national-scale ecological data integration project!