Soph Wilday

I am a marine scientist and machine learning researcher developing methods to make sense of the large datasets now routinely produced by marine monitoring. My PhD focuses on unsupervised and self-supervised machine learning for passive acoustic monitoring (PAM), building models that learn ecological structure directly from raw underwater sound without relying on extensive manual labelling.

After completing my MSci in Marine Biology and Oceanography at Bangor University, I worked across marine field science and applied research — including shark tracking through BRUV footage and fisheries science in Wales. I am now a PhD student in Dr Witt and Dr Hawkes' lab, where I develop self-supervised models for marine soundscapes, alongside applied computer-vision work for fisheries and tidal-energy wildlife monitoring.