Anna Zamansky

Assistant Professor

Head of Tech4Animals Lab

Department of Information Systems

Herta and Paul Amir Faculty of Social Sciences

Fields of Research

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Animal Health, Welfare and Wellbeing

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I received my B.A. and M.Sc. degrees in Computer Science from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and my Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University. I spent two years as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow working in Logic and AI at the Technical University of Vienna.

Our unique and multidisciplinary Tech4Animals Lab strives to unlock the power of AI to improve the welfare of animals and our communication with them. More than 20 researchers are currently working in the lab, including graduate students, postdocs and research assistants from diverse backgrounds such as Computer Science, Information Systems, Veterinary Medicine, Cognition, Anthropology, Applied Behavior, etc.

The lab is in the forefront of affective computing and automated behavior analysis in animals, and has developed and published first of their kind AI models for detection of pain and positive emotions from facial expression and body language analysis in cats, dogs, sheep, horses and rabbits. We work on digital solutions for monitoring welfare of sheltered dogs, helping handlers take better care of captive tigers and lions, supporting vets in early detection of neurological disorders and eye pathologies, detecting pain and stress in farm animals and many more. We have active international collaborations with veterinary hospitals, NGOs for animal welfare, shelters and research groups studying animal cognition, behavior and communication. Our projects are funded by Israel Ministry of Technology, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and Ministry of Defense.

FUNDRAISING NEEDS

The AI revolution is finally here: DALL-E creates better art, ChatGPT creates better text.

DrDoolittl-E will create better lives for animals everywhere on the planet.

We are committed to becoming the world’s leading hub on applying AI, ML and Data Science techniques for promoting welfare and health of animals worldwide, so that any organization – be it an NGO, veterinary hospital, farm or a nature reserve that wishes to take better care of its animals using digitalization can receive our help and support.

We need resources to (1) attract leading data scientists, graduate and postdoc students to our hub to be able to attend the needs of organizations that need our support, (2) collect, annotate,  analyze data and train models that will lead to creating DrDoolittl-E – the first of its kind AI model that can read animals’ body language, facial expressions and internal states, such as pain, distress and positive emotions.   

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