Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in inferring the past demographic history of a species
Led by Dr. Balaji Chattopadhyay ( Trivedi School of Biosciences) and Dr. Kritika M. Garg (Ramalingaswami Fellow, Department of Biology), this project aims to address critical challenges in biodiversity conservation.
Human activities have severely disrupted natural habitats, driving the current phase of climate change and triggering the sixth mass extinction event. Understanding how species have historically responded to climatic shifts is essential for predicting their future trajectories. While existing computational methods can reconstruct past population dynamics, they are often inaccessible, have limited resolution in complex demographic scenarios, and require significant computational resources and expertise.
This project seeks to develop an AI/ML-based program capable of predicting population size fluctuations—capturing complex demographic events and subtle variations—by analysing genomic data in past climatic conditions.
