David Gruber
Professor of Biology, Baruch College, City University of New York
Project CETI : Decoding the Language of Whales
Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), an interdisciplinary collaboration, hopes to develop algorithms and tools that assist future collection, processing, and analysis of multimodal streams of data in animal communication studies, including bioacoustic, behavioral, biological, and environmental data focused on Sperm whales.
David Gruber is Presidential Professor of Biology and Environmental Science at Baruch College, City University of New York and serves on the faculty of the Ph.D. Program in Biology at the CUNY Graduate Center and the CUNY Macaulay Honors College. He is also an Explorer for National Geographic and a Research Associate in Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History. His interdisciplinary research pertains to marine biology, microbiology, deep-sea ecology, polar biology, photosynthesis, biofluorescence, bioluminescence and animal communication. He completed a PhD in biological oceanography from the Rutgers University Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences and served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Brown University Division of Biology and Medicine, working to develop fluorescent proteins into probes with neurobiological and medical applications. Prof. Gruber’s deep-diving scientific diving teams have discovered scores of unique biofluorescent compounds, some of which have been developed into tools to find better cancer drugs. A former tropical forester for the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Gruber’s research utilizes Remote Operated Vehicles, extended-range SCUBA and soft robotics (in collaboration with the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory) to investigate corals, sponges and delicate forms of marine fauna. Gruber is passionate about utilizing modern technology to view the underwater world from marine creatures’ perspectives. In this vein, his group developed a “shark-eye” camera to gain a shark’s perspective of their marine environment. He is currently working on a project that applies advanced machine learning and non-invasive robotics to better understand sperm whales. Gruber was awarded the 2019 Lagrange Prize for his research “focused on the conservation of biodiversity, protection of resources and the safeguarding of ecosystems.”
