Optimizing sensor placement for estimating wildlife populations: an interview with Hannah Murray

In their paper Optimizing Sensor Placement with Greedy Algorithms: A Case Study in Wildlife Camera Trapping for Spatial Capture-Recapture Population Estimation, and present an approach for optimizing sensor placement for wildlife population counts. We caught up with first author Hannah to find out more about this work, which was presented at IJCAI-ECAI 2026 . What is the topic of the research in your paper, and why is it an interesting area for study? In our research, we set out to develop optimization methods that help ecologists determine where to place sensors, such as camera traps, to get precise estimates of species population counts from the data they collect. This information is integral for ecologists to measure ecosystem health and to develop effective conservation management strategies, but they usually work under strict budget constraints.