Thijs L van der Plas, D.Phil.

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 the 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 computer vision pipeline for mapping this National Park at 12.5 cm resolution, and I have worked in AI for environmental and ecological sciences since. I then joined the Alan Turing Institute as a Research Associate, where, in collaboration with the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, I developed methods that integrate remote sensing imagery with citizen-science wildlife observations to predict biodiversity in the UK.

In April 2025, I joined the AI group of Wageningen University, the Netherlands, where I develop multimodal and explainable AI for scalable ecological monitoring. I also focus on LLMs for data management and am passionate about research engineering best practices. My dream is to build an AI system that helps protecting nature by combining all kinds of biodiversity(-related) data to reliably and transparently monitor/predict the dynamic condition of habitats. If that sounds interesting to you, please get in touch!