Kamran Safi

Dr. Kamran Safi is a Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (Konstanz, Germany), holding a permanent position as a Senior Researcher (Principal Investigator) with the Computational Ecology Lab. He is also affiliated with the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Organismal Biology as a faculty member.

Education:

• PhD in Biology (2007), University of Zürich: Thesis on social sexual segregation in bats
• MSc in Biology (2001), University of Zürich: Thesis on olfactory communication in Bechstein’s bats
• Bachelor’s in Biology (2000), University of Zürich

Research Interests: Focus on movement ecology, macro-ecology, and macro-evolution. Key areas include analyzing animal-environment interactions using remote sensing and sensor data, modeling energy landscapes, and understanding biodiversity patterns. Methodological expertise includes computational ecology, probabilistic analysis, and interdisciplinary data fusion.

Articles Summary: Recent work spans animal flight mechanics (e.g., golden eagles using gravity waves), conservation applications (e.g., vulture nesting habitat loss), and software development (e.g., move2 R package). Themes include climate impacts on movement, remote sensing for ecology, and energy efficiency in flight.

Achievements: Pioneered MoveApps, an open analysis platform for tracking data. Authored over 40 peer-reviewed articles, with contributions to conservation protocols like the EDGE2 framework.

Grants & Labs: Leads the Animal-Environment Interactions Lab and collaborates globally. Projects include studying vultures in drylands, eagle flight in the Alps, and developing tools like the SOS framework for Earth observation integration.