The “Artificial intelligence and citizen science in monitoring and assessing biodiversity and invasive species at sea” Summer School took place in San Sebastián, Spain, from June 3–5 2025. The event was coordinated and hosted by AZTI and co-organized with GuardIAS, GES4SEAS, BioBoost+, OBAMA-NEXT, ANERIS, and POMP
The summer school brought together scientists, managers, and policymakers to explore how artificial intelligence and citizen science can support the monitoring and assessment of marine biodiversity and invasive species. Through a combination of lectures, hands-on workshops, and practical demonstrations, participants gained insights into the latest tools, methods, and applications in this rapidly evolving field.
View the program here.
Explore the presentations from the 2025 summer school
- Introduction: Angel Borja
- BioBoost + (Boosting the Frequency and Scale of Marine Biodiversity Monitoring Using Digital Imagery and Artificial Intelligence): Lisandro Benedetti-Cecchi
- Robust validation and comparison of Artificial Intelligence methods: Jose A. Fernandes
- Species identification through AI & expert community – Creating iNaturalist projects: Dr. Lauriane Ribas-Deulofeu
- Early detection of marine invasive alien species and monitoring methods: Stelios Katsanevakis and Rein Brys
- Benthic Species Workshop; Elaboration of Shared Training-sets, Labelling Tool And Supervised Classification Methods. Theory and Practice: Igor Granado and Mihailo Azhar
- CIMPAL+ theory and practice for alien species assessment: Stelios Katsanevakis and Heliana Teixeira
- Capacity building through citizen science activities: BioArtBlitz and Zooniverse projects: Agnese Marchini
- Involving citizen science for large scale eDNA collection and establishing early warning systems: Rein Brys
- Data-validation solutions for citizen science data on invasive alien species using smartphones: Elena Tricarico
- Citizen Science as a tool to reduce the marine biodiversity gap of knowledge and the usage of Artificial intelligence: Berta Companys, Xavier Salvador, Andreu Fornós, Sonia Liñan, Jaume Piera
- AI for Science Communication: Alice Estrela
