Lydia Allegranza France
AI Research Fellow & Scientific Software Engineer
Summary
Interdisciplinary researcher in AI and biology. Working at the intersection of natural motion, dynamical systems, explainable machine learning, and animal biomechanics, with a focus on reproducibility and open scientific software.
Experience
06/2024 - Present
Schmidt AI in Science Fellow
Developing data-driven and explainable AI methods to model bird flight as a dynamic morphing system. Focused on shape analysis, rough path signatures, and interpretable decompositions of motion.
- Applying decomposition methods to bird wing motion
- Collaborating across mathematics, zoology, and computer science
- Developing open-source analysis tools for natural motion
07/2021 - Present
Research Data Scientist
Collaborative scientific software engineering and AI research across academic and public sector projects. Worked in domains from digital humanities, trusted digital signatures, and urban analytics. Most recently, research with GNNs for AI weather forecasting in partnership with the UK Met Office.
- Developing GNN-based models for spatiotemporal forecasting
- Scalable workflows using HPC and Azure
- Co-led training and reproducibility initiatives for research software
10/2020 - Present
Biological Sciences Lecturer
Tutorial and course-based teaching across zoology, behaviour, statistics, and programming for undergraduates. Ongoing contributor to interdisciplinary methods teaching across DTC programmes.
- Course creation in Python, R, MATLAB, version control, and data science
- Student support and supervision in quantitative biosciences
08/2019 - 07/2021
Postdoctoral Research Assistant
Studied flight control, obstacle avoidance, and vision-guided behaviour in birds. Recorded over 4 million data points using a custom motion capture system.
- ERC-funded research into visually guided flight
- Fieldwork and experimental design with Harris hawks and zebra finches