Dr. Pritish Chakravarty

Postdoc

Department for the Ecology of Animal Societies

pchakravarty@ab.mpg.de

Main Focus

Pritish Chakravarty worked as a postdoctoral researcher on social sleep at the Department for the Ecology of Animal Societies at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. He is an engineer with research expertise in animal motion sensing and analysis applied to the study of animal behavior and ecology.

His work focuses on developing algorithms to obtain biologically meaningful information from accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, and quaternion data by using his knowledge of signal processing, sensor physics, biomotion, machine learning, cross-validation, and sensor fusion.

Keywords to describe his research: IMU, algorithms, accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, sensor fusion, behavior, energy expenditure, social sleep

Curriculum Vitae

Academic Positions

2022-24: Postdoctoral Researcher in the sociality of sleep, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Konstanz, Germany
2021-22: Postdoctoral Research Associate in modeling the effects of visual noise on foraging in fish, Marine Behavioural Ecology Group, University of Cambridge, UK
2020-21: Postdoctoral Forschungskredit Fellow in energetics and foraging in meerkats, Population Ecology Group, Universität Zürich, Switzerland
2015: Visiting Student Researcher in tissue analysis using MRI, Stanford BioMotion Lab, Stanford University, USA
2014: Summer Intern in tissue analysis using MRI, Swiss BioMotion Lab, Centre hospitalier universitaire vaudois, Switzerland
2012-13: Research Assistant in fluid flow in microchannels, Microfluidics Lab, Indian Institute of Bombay, India

Education

2015-20: Ph.D. in animal motion sensing and analysis using inertial and magnetic sensors, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
2013-15: M.Sc. in Bioengineering (minor in Biomedical Technologies), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
2008-12: B.Tech. (Hons) in Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India

Press coverage

Sociality of Sleep paper (2024) in Trends in Ecology and Evolution:
English: EurekAlert; Phys.org; NeuroscienceNews; SleepReviewMag; MPI News; Uni Konstanz News
German: Süddeutsche Zeitung; Tagesspiegel; Berliner Zeitung
French: Le Parisien
Chinese: ScienceNet.cn; QQ.com
Biomechanical Approach to Behavior Recognition paper (2019) in Methods in Ecology and Evolution:
English: British Ecological Society; EPFL news; Wildlife.org; EurekAlert; Phys.org; ScienceDaily; Tunisie Soir
German: Swiss Info; Tagblatt; Bauern Zeitung; Der Standard
French: 20Minutes; 24Heures; Le Soir; Tribune de Genève

Blogposts by Pritish

3. Biomechanically aware behavior recognition using accelerometers

2. The Sixth Bio-logging Symposium, Konstanz: Through the eyes of an engineer, part II

1. The Kalahari: Through the eyes of an engineer