Open call to fund short-term scientific missions (STSMs) for early-career researchers in the field of artificial intelligence applied to the conservation of insects. 

COST ACTION 22129 InsectAI – Using Image-based AI for Insect Monitoring & Conservation, is offering up to €4000 to cover travel, accommodation, and meal expenses for short-term scientific missions (STSMs) by researchers involved in official research programs (PhD students, postdoctoral trainees, or affiliated with a research institution). 

These STSMs involve visits to organizations in different countries, allowing researchers to work on specific projects for a given period. This is a unique opportunity to expand horizons and make significant contributions to the scientific objectives of the InsectAI COST Action. The minimum duration of the mission is 5 working days and must be completed within a single period. The mission must take place by September 30th, 2026. To apply, you must submit a comprehensive report on the work plan, including planned activities and main results expected, a general breakdown of expected expenses, and future follow-up activities. 

The budget allocated per grant is determined by the Grant Award Committee, taking into account the application, Action priorities, and available funds. 

More information on the selection criteria is available in the grants section of the website.

Deadline to apply: Open on a Rolling Basis

In this 3^rd year of InsectAI, additional STSMs will be awarded to fulfill the Working Groups specific needs and objectives.

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Working Group specific STSM topics

There are four working groups (WGs) in the InsectAI COST Action, each seeking contributions on particular topics during this stage of the Action. Please have these in consideration when preparing your STSM proposal and, if interested, contact the WG leads before submitting your proposal: 

WG1 Societal Needs  

There are no specific proposals for WG1 at this time. Contact the WG lead if you have an idea for an STSM.

WG2 Image Collection  

1. WG2 STSM Topic: Developing an InsectAI Camera Kit for Kids 

Overview
InsectAI is launching a collaborative and creative project to design an insect camera kit for children, a playful tool to spark curiosity about the natural world while introducing basic ideas in electronics, artificial intelligence, and biodiversity observation. The aim is to create an affordable and open kit that children can use at home or in the classroom to discover the hidden lives of insects through technology and exploration. 

This STSM offers a chance to help shape the project from the ground up. Nothing is fixed yet — participants will have the freedom to contribute ideas, test concepts, and co-design the kit’s educational and technical aspects together with other InsectAI members. The work may include anything from hardware tinkering and AI model development to designing activities that inspire young learners.  

Teachers, Educators, and Science Communicators 

We warmly invite teachers, educators, and anyone passionate about science outreach to take part in imagining how this kit can best engage and inspire children.

Possible contributions include: 

• Co-developing lesson ideas, games, or experiments that connect insects, nature, and technology. 

• Helping ensure the kit is fun, safe, and inclusive for diverse learning environments. 

• Advising on how to align activities with school curricula or informal learning goals. 

• Exploring ways to bring the joy of insect observation into classrooms, workshops, or community events. 

Your experience in education or science communication will help make the kit not only functional but meaningful — a bridge between curiosity and understanding, technology and ecology. 

Engineers, Makers, and Computer Scientists 

We also welcome engineers, programmers, and creative tinkerers who are excited about building simple, open-source tools for learning and exploration.
Possible contributions include: 

• Experimenting with small microcontroller-based camera systems for image capture. 

• Developing lightweight AI models for object or insect detection. 

• Exploring design ideas for low-cost, robust, and child-friendly prototypes. 

• Helping define what is technically feasible while keeping the kit playful and educational. 

You do not need to be an expert in any particular platform or language — what matters most is curiosity, creativity, and a willingness to prototype ideas alongside others with complementary skills. 

Collaboration and Support 

This is a shared, evolving project within InsectAI, involving researchers, educators, and technologists from across Europe. The STSM grantee will work closely with members of different Working Groups who can offer complementary expertise in AI, biodiversity monitoring, and educational design. 

We encourage prospective applicants to reach out to the relevant Working Group leads before applying, to discuss ideas and potential contributions. This project thrives on imagination, and your perspective could help shape what the final kit becomes. 

2. WG2 STSM Topic: Advancing Metadata Standards for Automated Visual Insect Monitoring 

Overview
As automated visual insect monitoring expands across Europe, the diversity of camera systems, data formats, and AI models poses a major challenge for data interoperability and reuse. Establishing shared metadata standards is essential to ensure that datasets, annotations, and model outputs can be compared, integrated, and interpreted across projects and platforms. Such standards will benefit researchers, data managers, and conservation practitioners by making insect monitoring data more findable, accessible, and reusable. 

 Within InsectAI, members of Working Groups 2, 3, and 4 have been collaborating to explore existing standards such as Camtrap DP and to identify the unique needs of insect monitoring systems. Through surveys, workshops, and collaborative writing sessions, the group has already outlined key challenges and drafted proposals for extending current data models to accommodate continuous sensing, uncertain identifications, and AI-derived predictions. 

This STSM offers an opportunity to contribute to the next steps of this cross-WG effort, helping refine and document proposed metadata structures. In particular, example datasets implementing CamTrap DP and InsectAI extensions, and producing educational and promotional materials related to the standard, would be useful activities. The scope is deliberately open: applicants may focus on testing concepts with real datasets, drafting guidelines, or exploring technical solutions for linking annotations, model predictions, and biological observations. 

The selected candidate will work closely with members of WGs 2–3–4, building on existing outputs and discussions while bringing their own expertise and ideas to shape the emerging standard. 

We encourage interested applicants to contact the relevant Working Group leads before applying, to discuss how their skills and interests could best complement ongoing work. 

WG3 Image Processing  

1. WG3 STSM Topic: The InsectAI Model Zoo: Cataloguing AI Models for Insect Detection and Classification 

This opportunity is targeted towards early-career researchers (Master’s, PhD, or postdoctoral level) with interests in insects, ecology, entomology, and data science. It addresses the growing challenge of navigating and comparing increasing numbers of AI models used for insect detection and classification, many of which lack consistent documentation or standardised metadata.  

Based at Aarhus University, or with another appropriate host of their choosing, participants will survey scientific literature and online sources to identify relevant AI models and document them in a curated online repository, developed in collaboration with Wouter Koch and Guillaume Mougeot. The work will contribute to a review of current approaches, highlighting strengths, limitations, and emerging trends in AI for insect monitoring. 

You will gain a detailed understanding of the landscape of AI models for insect monitoring, including the role of foundation vision–language models. You will also gain practical skills in GitHub Pages and web presentation. There will be opportunities to co-author a scientific publication as an active member of the InsectAI research community. 

Publishing a New InsectAI Dataset: From Annotations to FAIR Data 

This opportunity invites early-career researchers (Master’s, PhD, or postdoctoral level) in ecology, entomology, or data science work on publishing a high-quality insect monitoring dataset – whether from your own work or by curating an existing, unpublished dataset on pollinators in montane ecosystems. The project responds to the growing need for accessible and standardised datasets—many of which currently exist but are inconsistently formatted or unpublished. 

Working from Aarhus University with Jamie Alison, or another appropriate host of their choosing, participants will refine, document, and publish a dataset following FAIR principles and InsectAI standards and best practices. The dataset will be useful in its own right, but must also serve as a gold-standard example for others in the community seeking to publish data from visual insect monitoring systems. There may also be opportunities to bring together existing datasets. 

Researchers will gain experience with annotation, metadata standards for image-based wildlife monitoring (building on the CamTrap DP framework) and will co-author the publication of a dataset and perhaps associated research. This project provides both technical and scholarly engagement within the growing InsectAI research community. 

WG4 Data Analysis and Integration  

1. WG4 STSM Topic: Development of tools to aid researchers in assessing and analysing insect monitoring data from traditional and/or computer vision-based methods. 

One of the key deliverables of Working Group 4 is a toolbox to support researchers working with insect monitoring data sourced from both traditional and computer vision-based collection methods. Monitoring data comes with a set of nuances depending on how and why it was collected. Understanding these nuances is essential for the interpretation of and inference from these data. This toolbox will link to existing tools, supply new tools, and offer guidance and support for researchers to appropriately assess and analyse their datasets. 

Work on the toolbox so far has focused on available tools for the exploratory analysis phase of a research project (think data cleaning, exploring data coverage, and understanding potential biases). This has involved an online survey of the InsectAI community to gather information on what areas are explored, the tools used, and gaps in tool availability. This was followed by a workshop at the annual meeting in Albania where the group compiled a list of available tools and started collating information on what these tools can be used for.  

Moving forward, we would like an STSM project to focus on the data analysis phase of a project. As such, we are looking for someone with an interest in statistical modelling to start developing a tool that will allow practitioners to run integrated hierarchical models for data from two sources. Consider the challenge of combining data from traditional insect monitoring with that from automated image-based methods, for example. You will also help to develop the toolbox, ensuring tools are clearly organised, described, and integrated into the wider InsectAI toolbox by working closely with WGs 2 and 3. 

If you would like to discuss this STSM, please contact Working Group 4 leads Charlie Outhwaite (based at the Zoological Society of London, UK)  and Joe Chipperfield (based at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Norway) who are open to hosting STSMs at their institutions. (Charlie: charlotte.outhwaite@ioz.ac.uk Joe: joseph.chipperfield@nina.no). 

2. WG4 STSM Topic: Building a toolbox to aid researchers interested in data integration. 

One of the key deliverables of Working Group 4 is a toolbox to support researchers working with insect monitoring data sourced from both traditional and computer vision-based collection methods. Work on the toolbox so far has focused on available tools for the exploratory analysis phase of a research project (think data cleaning, exploring data coverage, and understanding potential biases). This has involved an online survey of the InsectAI community to gather information on what areas are explored, the tools used, and gaps in tool availability. This was followed by a workshop at the annual meeting in Albania where the group compiled a list of available tools and started collating information on what these tools can be used for.

The outcomes of the survey and subsequent work has resulted in a draft TOOLBOX which is now available on Github. This only covers exploratory analysis tools, so we would like to conduct a follow up survey to start to build the statistical analysis tools and resources section. The STSM candidate will design a survey to be sent to members of the Action, collate the resulting data, and build upon existing resources to then integrate these into the toolbox. This is a great opportunity for someone interested in data integration and analysis as you will learn about current approaches being used by those working in the area.

If you would like to discuss this STSM, please contact Working Group 4 leads Charlie Outhwaite (based at the Zoological Society of London, UK)  and Joe Chipperfield (based at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Norway) who are open to hosting STSMs at their institutions. (Charlie: charlotte.outhwaite@ioz.ac.uk Joe: joseph.chipperfield@nina.no).