Lauren is a marine scientist with a varied research background that includes molecular biology, ichthyology, optics, and biological oceanography. She completed her undergraduate and MSc degrees in South Africa, where she grew up, and moved to UK to undertake her PhD at the University of St. Andrews.
After graduating, Lauren first worked as the senior marine Earth Observation scientist for Cefas and the Defra Earth Observation (EO) Centre of Excellence. Thereafter, she joined the EO Science Applications group at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, where she developed a method for detecting and classifying marine debris using high resolution optical satellite data and a shallow machine learning model. Recently, Lauren took on the role of Marine Remote Sensing lecturer at the University of Plymouth.