Brian Spiesman

Brian Spiesman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Entomology at Kansas State University. He leads the Pollinator Ecology Lab, which investigates how environmental changes impact pollinators and plants, using field experiments, modeling, and computer vision tools like the BeeMachine platform for bee identification.

Education:
B.S. (Portland State University), M.S. (University of Florida), Ph.D. (Florida State University).

Research: Dr. Spiesman studies pollinator ecology, machine learning applications in biodiversity monitoring, and ecological network stability. His work addresses pollinator declines through habitat conservation, species distribution modeling, and AI-driven identification tools. Key themes include:

• Pollinator responses to habitat loss/climate change
• Computer vision for ecological data collection
• Metapopulation dynamics in agroecosystems

Publications: His recent articles (2013–2024) emphasize interdisciplinary approaches, merging ecology with computer science to tackle conservation challenges. Trends include deep learning for species identification, landscape-scale pollinator studies, and soil carbon dynamics in grasslands.

Projects & Teams: He developed BeeMachine, a citizen science platform using convolutional neural networks to identify bees globally. Collaborators include Claudio Gratton (UW-Madison), William Hsu (KSU), and USDA-ARS researchers. The Pollinator Ecology Lab combines field ecology with computational innovation to advance pollinator conservation.