Profile
Tristan Kleyn
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About Me:
Hi there, my name’s Tristan and I’m a PhD student and bioacoustician (someone who studies the sounds that living things produce) living and working in St. Andews, Scotland. Outside science, I’m still a lover of all things sound! In my free time I love learning new musical instruments and listening to music of all kinds. I’m a friend of the flora and an amigo of the animals – I love exploring nature, hiking, and wild swimming.
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My pronouns are:
He/him
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My Work:
I develop algorithms to automatically identify dolphin species by the sounds they make. This involves using machine learning to decipher differences in the acoustic structure of dolphin whistles and clicks.
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Read more
Dolphins are highly intelligent animals that can produce an amazing diversity of sounds. They can ‘whistle’ to chat with one another, ‘click’ to locate food and their surroundings, and make a whole bunch of other noises. These sounds might be different for different species of dolphin, and if they are, we can use this to find and count the number of dolphins for each species we have here in Scotland. This helps us to know when their populations around the UK expand or decline in numbers.
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My Typical Day:
My work is all about acoustic analysis. Acoustic analysis is quite complicated and has many moving parts. It starts with collecting recordings using a microphone (or underwater microphone, called a ‘hydrophone’, for dolphins). Most of my days involve using computer software and code to analyse these recordings to (hopefully!) discover new things about dolphin communication. I’d love to chat with anyone who wants to know more!
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My Interview
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What did you want to be after you left school?
A particle physicist!
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Several times...
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
A songwriter! Ask me about my songs :D
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Tough one, but I'll go with The Strokes
What's your favourite food?
Any Indian curry :)
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
(1) Having grown up in the age of technology, I'm certainly guilty of not reading enough so I'd like to read more (2) I wish politicians would stop being silly and start working together to mitigate climate change, and (3) I wish I could speak with dolphins :)
Tell us a joke.
Yesterday a book fell on my head, but I suppose I had myshelf to blame.
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