Lauren is a marine remote sensing scientist with a varied research background that includes molecular biology, ichthyology, and biological oceanography. She did her undergraduate and MSc degrees in South Africa, where she grew up, but moved to Scotland to undertake a PhD at the University of St. Andrews' Scottish Oceans Institute. 

After graduating, Lauren first worked as the senior Earth Observation scientist for Cefas and marine lead on the Defra Earth Observation (EO) Centre of Excellence for 3 years. Thereafter, she joined the EO Science Applications group at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, where she divided her time between leading EUMETSAT marine earth observation training workshops, and using high-resolution satellite data and machine learning for detection and classification of materials floating on the ocean surface. In September 2023, Lauren joined the School of Biological and Marine Sciences as Marine Remote Sensing lecturer and researcher.

Current PhD Students:

1. Director of Studies (DoS) on DRA-funded PhD Cerys Rimmer: Assessing OLCI ‘new normal’ Sargassum blooms and historical Cloud Cover trends across the Atlantic Basin. Sept 2024 - current.
2. Co-supervisor of PhD student Philippa Edwards: Mapping the Biological Pump – Ocean Carbon Storage from Space to Seafloor. Lead: B.B Cael. Sept 2024 – current.
3. Co-supervisor of PhD student Kate Chadwick: Developing a Novel System to Monitor Status of SW Coastal Ecosystems. Lead: Luis Huckstadt. Sept 2023 – current.
4. Co-supervisor of ARISE PhD Ahmed Aslam Waheed. Impact of Sea-Level Rise on Atoll Islands of the Maldives. Lead: Gerd Masselink. Sept 2023 – current.
5. Co-supervisor of PhD student Oliver Thomas. Assessing Ecological Impacts of Restoring Intertidal Seagrass Meadows in SW England Estuaries. Lead: Mel Austin. Submitted Jan 2025.

Since starting at the university in September 2023, I have designed and delivered two new modules on Satellite Remote Sensing for Marine and Coastal Applications. At undergraduate and postgraduate level, this has included the use of SNAP, QGIS, and Python for data visualisation. At MSc level, I also teach shallow ML for timeseries analysis and object detection.

In September 2024, I redesigned the first-year module 'Measuring the Marine Environment', implementing teaching of Python-based skills to complement R-based statistics.

In 2021, I was awarded the Blue Marine (BLUE) International Ocean Award in the category of ‘original scientific contribution’.

In 2020, our paper ‘Finding Plastic Patches in Coastal Waters using Optical Satellite Data’ was the third most downloaded paper in the category of earth science papers published by Nature Scientific Reports, and made the journals’ ‘Top 100’ publications overall.