SPAIA:

standing for “The Society of People Against The Insect Apocalypse”, SPAIA’s mission is to revolutionize ecosystem monitoring & intervention with ground truth insect data.

Working a driven team of three others, I was responsible for:
- Development and refinement of original MVP based new user research
- Overseeing the product development lifecycle, from ideation to market launch
- Networking with environmental and entomological communities
- Researching variety of hardware sensing and image recognition technology for best fit
During my nine months as product lead, I was honed my skills in and learned about:
- European biodiversity standards for corporations
- 3D printing for chamber design
- economic opportunity in promotion of beneficial insect populations
- Tripled monthly data capture metrics
- Laid groundwork for collaborative forums and analytical dashboards for the global biodiversity community
- Brokered HORIZON grant academic partnerships

The SPAIA smart insect monitor lands in Walenstadt, Switzerland.

Monitoring mason bees at the Phänomena site, Zurich

Dashboard and app prototype

Labeled SPAIA Research Assistant images from Dietikon and Walenstadt pilot tests

The biodiversity data gap poses a major risk to ecosystem health, conservation efforts and business sustainability goals. While critical to issues like climate resilience and ESG compliance, challenges remain in:
- gaps exist in biodiversity data collection that hinders effective ecosystem management
- inconsistent localized efforts, lacking standardized sampling protocols
- scaling of ground-based biodiversity data
Our approach centered on developing standardized, automated monitoring technologies that could be deployed widely by diverse stakeholders. We set out to create an affordable, easy-to-use biodiversity monitoring platform that could scale up data collection efforts through engaging citizen scientists, businesses and researchers.
Based on extensive research and feedback, we built a new version that:
- was modular for location flexibility and customization
- included custom data tagging
- multimodal testing suite
Based on our new product release and pilot results, we:
- secured first subscription customer contract
- received funding and research support from Fraunhofer IZM
- launched K-12 education program for hands-on biodiversity learning