Léa Bouffaut, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellow

How to utilize passive acoustic recordings conservation-oriented marine research? With a background at the intersection of physical acoustics and signal processing, I have steered my research to investigate this question. My interests include the following themes:

Léa Bouffaut, Ph.D.
Léa Bouffaut, Ph.D.
  • Automatic detection and classification of marine mammal signals;
  • Adapting opportunistic and innovative acoustic sensing methods for cetacean monitoring, such as telecommunication fiber optic cable converted into large scale distributed acoustic sensing arrays;
  • Contextualizing acoustic recordings using multi-sensory biologging platforms, data overlay, and data visualization;
  • Using physical acoustics to squeeze behavior-relevant information from single sensors such as 3D localization and source level estimation.

I conducted my Ph.D. in underwater acoustics and signal processing at the École Navale, co-advised by Pr. Abdel Boudraa and Dr. Valérie Labat, and awarded in 2019. It focused on the detection and classification of stereotyped blue whale signals recorded by ocean bottom seismometers in the Indian Ocean. During that time, I visited the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics for a 3-month research stay (financed by the École Navale and GdR ISIS). Our collaborative work received the IEEE OES Norman Miller Award, and I received the Fondation de la Mer Award for my Ph.D. work. I recently completed a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship at NTNU, Norway, where I focused on distributed acoustic sensing and biologging for baleen whales in the Arctic.

As a postdoctoral associate at the Yang Center, my main project focuses on developing AI algorithms to identify marine mammal vocal activities.

Year Hired: 2022

Contact Information
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA
Phone: +1 607 319 1109
Email: lea.bouffaut@cornell.edu

Degree(s):
PhD., Underwater acoustics & signal processing, Université de Brest, 2019
MSc., Acoustics for research, Le Mans Université, 2015
BSc., Acoustic engineering, Le Mans Université, 2013

Social Media: ResearchGate, LinkedIn, GitHub, YouTube, Twitter

Taweesintananon, K. et al. (2023) ‘Distributed acoustic sensing of ocean-bottom seismo-acoustics and distant storms: A case study from Svalbard, Norway’, GEOPHYSICS, 88(3), pp. B135–B150. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1190/geo2022-0435.1.
Rørstadbotnen, R.A. et al. (2023) ‘Simultaneous tracking of multiple whales using two fiber-optic cables in the Arctic’, Frontiers in Marine Science, 10. Available at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2023.1130898 (Accessed: 8 May 2023).
Landrø, M. et al. (2022) ‘Sensing whales, storms, ships and earthquakes using an Arctic fibre optic cable’, Scientific Reports, 12(1), p. 19226. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-23606-x.
Bouffaut, L. et al. (2022) ‘Eavesdropping at the Speed of Light: Distributed Acoustic Sensing of Baleen Whales in the Arctic’, Frontiers in Marine Science, 9. Available at: https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.901348.
Bouffaut, L. et al. (2020) ‘A performance comparison of tonal detectors for low-frequency vocalizations of Antarctic blue whales’, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 147(260). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0000609.
Bouffaut, L. et al. (2019) ‘Automated blue whale song transcription across variable acoustic contexts’, Oceans 2019 [Preprint].