Norah Smith ’26, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Nora Smith ’26

Major

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Project Title

Reconstructing Archaeocyathid Fossils to Understand the Early Cambrian

Presentation Link

View Nora's Presentation

Minor(s): History, Statistics and Machine Learning

Early Cambrian reef builders called Archaeocyathids may provide important information about marine environments of the period. Reconstructing their fossils is essential to understanding their morphology and can provide insights into their role as potential havens of biodiversity during the Cambrian explosion. I focused on building tools to reconstruct three-dimensional fossils from stacks of their two-dimensional cross-sections taken through the GIRI imaging pipeline. I prepared and imaged a representative set of slabbed Archaeocyathid wackestones from the Flinders Ranges, South Australia. I then developed a Python-based imaging processing pipeline to color-correct and segment images based on their intensity distributions. This allowed me to identify promising samples for image segmentation and separate fossils from their matrix in each photo. In the coming year, I hope to refine these tools to automate fossil identification and reconstruction, which will allow me to examine their structure within their early Cambrian environment. Through this project, I gained practical lab skills, invaluable computing experience and an appreciation of the beauty of studying the origins of life through close examination of the natural world.