Last week, joint SRUC / BioSS PhD student Claire Stainfield and BioSS senior statistician Thomas Cornulier took part in the 2025 annual Pint of Science Festival in Aberdeen, contributing to one of five events running in the city and the shire over three days. Claire and Thomas delivered thought-provoking presentations to an audience of ca. 30 science enthusiasts gathered at the OGV Podium to learn all about "Futuristic Ecology". Congratulations both!

Claire's doctoral project is all about assessing the sustainable development of the seal tourism industry in North-East Scotland. In her talk, she explained how she blends ecology and social science by combining drone surveys to track local grey seal populations and big data analysis from activity trackers and social media to understand visitor activities and perspectives. Claire's research aims at determining whether human presence influences seal haul-out locations, and providing an evidence-based blueprint for balancing conservation with recreational access in protected coastal environments.

Thomas detailed how tiny sensors (miniature wearable bio-loggers), like those crammed in smartphones, have transformed how we measure the activity of wild animals and plants, allowing us to follow their every move and environment with incredible detail, even in previously unreachable locations. Thomas demonstrated how we can now monitor the pulse of trees by the hour, track seabird movements across oceans, or the privacy of bats in the dark, second by second.

The Pint of Science festival is a worldwide event that takes place annually in May. This year, 2,300 public engagement events were run as part of the festival across 520 cities in 27 countries! 

The next installment of the festival will take place on 18–20 May, 2026. More details are available on the Pint of Science website at https://pintofscience.co.uk/