Ceri Flook

Ceri plans to bring artificial intelligence (AI) to the soil. The expert in ecosystem regeneration, who is from the UK and now lives in Berlin, is working on ways AI-assisted vision technology may identify and quantify microorganisms in the soil. Farmers will know exactly what is missing from the soil biome — and what microbial life needs to be put back in. Currently, sampling is a time-consuming, manual affair, performed by highly trained microbiologists. However, advances in microscopy allow us to see and count bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes more easily. The natural next step, Ceri argues, is to scale this method up — using AI. For a long time, this young changemaker couldn’t quite figure out what “turning climate anxiety into action” might look like; with her soil-meets-AI project she’s right in the middle of it.