The Digital Forester

Ben Gwilliam is a Private Land Forest Inventory Analyst with the Ontario Woodlot Association (OWA) and joins us from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Ben completed a Master of Forest Conservation at the University of Toronto before joining the OWA where his work focuses on developing enhanced forest inventories using lidar for private woodlot owners. Ben shares how he got started and the various tools that he has had to learn to be able to offer this service to OWA members.

Swapan Chaudhuri is the Co-Founder and CEO of Deeplai and joins us from Poland. TimberID is a complete platform solving the digitalization of forest management and reporting in terms of harvested timber database creation delivering timber provenance authentication, supply chain verification and carbon footprint monitoring. Come have a listen on how TimberID technology can help forestry companies meet their European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) obligations.

John Pineau is the Executive Director at the Ontario Woodlot Association (OWA) and joins us from Mattawa, Ontario. John has worked in the forest industry, led research organizations focused on driving innovation in forestry, taught as a professor at colleges, and most recently, is providing leadership with non-profit organizations. As Part 1 of a podcast series with the OWA, come have a listen about John’s journey as an innovator and community builder in the forest industry.

Alex Meyers is the COO and Co-Founder of TimberEye, a company that reimagines how logs get measured, moved, bought and sold. TimberEye log scaling technology perfectly handles hundreds of thousands of logs a month with its operating system covering every aspect of log inventory management. TimberEye scales logs 20x faster than humans within 0.3 cm of verified human scalers resulting in your team having perfect real time visibility into your operations. Come listen to Alex explain how TimberEye is a better way to interact with your supply chain.

Alicia Sullivan is the Product Manager for Google’s Earth Engine Sustainability Solutions and joins us from the greater Seattle area. She obtained her Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Forest Resources Management from the University of Washington and started her forestry career at the Washington Department of Natural Resources and Weyerhaeuser. Her interest in program and product management led her to roles with Microsoft, Amazon, CARMERA and Google. Come have a listen to Alicia’s career journey from forestry to high tech and their overlap with climate and environment.

Steven Hawkes is the Vice President of Forest Resources at LandVest and joins us from Concord, New Hampshire, USA. Steven has been responsible for the oversight of a team of highly qualified foresters, GIS technicians, and administrative staff who provide a full suite of professional forest management services on over 2,000,000 acres of privately-held timberland across the Mid-Atlantic and New England. Come have a listen on a broad range of topics from technology to innovation to people from one of the leaders in the forest industry.

Dr. Tuomo Kauranne is the CEO of Arbonaut, a Finnish company focused on building digital twins of forests. In 1998, Arbonaut developed the first forest inventory tools in the world capable of detecting individual trees from aerial and satellite imagery, and over its 25+ years in business, has completed over 100 forestry projects in over 30 countries. Come listen to Tuomo story tell how the company got founded and how he leverages technology for impact.

Markus Drugge (CEO) and Jacob Hjalmarsson (COO) of Arboair join us on this podcast. Many forest owners today lack forest data at a detailed level. At the same time, forest management could be conducted both more profitably and sustainably if we had high-quality digital decision-making data for the prevailing state of the forest. Come have a listen to learn how Arboair uses AI-driven image analysis to produce sharp decision-making data for forest owners.

Dr. Matt Russell is the President & CEO of Arbor Custom Analytics and offers data and analytics consulting services to forestry companies and organizations. With experience in forestry and analytics research, teaching, and outreach, and having authored and co-authored over 80 peer-reviewed articles focusing on applied forestry research, come have a listen on Matt’s thoughts on multiple topics ranging from carbon to blockchain technology.