{"id":7527,"date":"2026-06-09T14:14:43","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T18:14:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/?page_id=7527"},"modified":"2026-06-09T14:14:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T18:14:43","slug":"dahlberg-prophet-ai","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/dahlberg-prophet-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Using AI to Improve Animal Health and Sustainable Food Systems"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t<ul class=\"profile-listing profile-format-advanced\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\n<li class=\"profile-item profile-item-advanced has-title post-6707 profile type-profile status-publish hentry\">\n\t<a href=\"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/profile\/eric-dahlberg\/\" class=\"profile-link profile-link-advanced\">\n\t\t<figure class=\"profile-photo profile-photo-advanced\">\n\t\t\t<img width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"\/urban\/files\/2025\/09\/2025_Eric-Dahlberg-e1757950736933-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"Eric Dahlberg headshot\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/files\/2025\/09\/2025_Eric-Dahlberg-e1757950736933-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/files\/2025\/09\/2025_Eric-Dahlberg-e1757950736933-636x636.jpg 636w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/files\/2025\/09\/2025_Eric-Dahlberg-e1757950736933-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/files\/2025\/09\/2025_Eric-Dahlberg-e1757950736933-768x769.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/files\/2025\/09\/2025_Eric-Dahlberg-e1757950736933-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/files\/2025\/09\/2025_Eric-Dahlberg-e1757950736933.jpg 1429w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/>\t\t<\/figure>\n\n\t\t<h6 class=\"profile-name profile-name-advanced\">A. Eric Dahlberg<\/h6>\n\t\t<p class=\"profile-title profile-title-advanced\">M.S. in Data Science<\/p>\t<\/a>\n\n\t\n<\/li>\n\t\t\t<\/ul>\n\n<p><strong>Project Partner:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/greentownlabs.com\/members\/prophet-ai\/\">Prophet AI<\/a>,\u00a0Spring 2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Project Summary:\u00a0 <\/strong>Modern livestock farming faces a major challenge: it is difficult to monitor the health and behavior of individual animals at scale. Subtle signs of illness, like changes in movement or eating habits, often go unnoticed, leading to delayed treatment, reduced animal welfare, and inefficient resource use. This has environmental consequences, as mortality in flocks raises the risk of infection, and increases costs to farmers due to removal and wasted feed cost.<\/p>\n<p>Eric partnered with Prophet AI on their computer vision models, helping design data driven tools that analyze animal movement using computer vision. From large-scale video data he was able to extract behavioral signals, such as walking patterns and activity levels, to identify bird health. This took experimentation of methods for calculating a waddle and how to aggregate and analyze signals across time.<\/p>\n<p>This work is one step in a process of transforming raw video data into actionable insights for farmers, enabling earlier detection of health issues and more targeted interventions. Improving animal welfare and reducing inefficiencies contribute to more sustainable and responsible food production.<\/p>\n<p>This experience strengthened Eric\u2019s interest in building AI-powered products that drive real-world impact, and he plans to continue developing data-driven tools at the intersection of technology, sustainability, and human-centered design.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Project Deliverables:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Developed a data pipeline to aggregate bird movement data and compute behavioral metrics, including waddle detection signals.<\/li>\n<li>Research\u00a0summary\u00a0and exploratory code to identify waddle signals.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Watch Eric&#8217;s URBAN Internship lightning talk <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/1krh7bYRyj8\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Project Partner: Prophet AI,\u00a0Spring 2026 Project Summary:\u00a0 Modern livestock farming faces a major challenge: it is difficult to monitor the health and behavior of individual animals at scale. Subtle signs of illness, like changes in movement or eating habits, often go unnoticed, leading to delayed treatment, reduced animal welfare, and inefficient resource use. This has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24039,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7527"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24039"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7528,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7527\/revisions\/7528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}