AI Seminar: Environmental monitoring with remote sensing and deep learning
Join us for a talk by Jan Dirk Wegner, EcoVision Lab, Department of Mathematical Modeling and Machine Learning, University of Zurich. Everybody is welcome to attend.
Title
Environmental monitoring with remote sensing and deep learning
Abstract
Modern deep learning in combination with satellite data offers great opportunities to protect nature at global scale. I will present ongoing research to estimate snow depth, to model species distributions, and to remotely monitor armed conflicts. Traditional approaches usually have to be adapted for specific ecosystems and regions. It is therefore very difficult to carry out homogeneous, large-scale modeling with high spatial and temporal resolution and, at the same time, good accuracy. Data-driven approaches, especially modern deep learning methods, promise great potential here to achieve globally consistent, transparent assessments of our environment. Although I will not present work on self-supervised learning, I will point out ideas of where this would be most beneficial given our current research.
Bio
Jan Dirk Wegner holds the "Data Science for Sciences" chair at the DM3L at University of Zurich as an Associate Professor and is head of the EcoVision Lab. Jan was PostDoc (2012-2016) and senior scientist (2017-2020) in the Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing group at ETH Zurich after completing his PhD (with distinction) at Leibniz Universität Hannover in 2011. His main research interests are at the frontier of machine learning, computer vision, and remote sensing to solve scientific questions in the environmental sciences and geosciences. Jan was granted multiple awards, among others an ETH Postdoctoral fellowship and the science award of the German Geodetic Commission. He was selected for the WEF Young Scientist Class 2020 as one of the 25 best researchers world-wide under the age of 40 committed to integrating scientific knowledge into society for the public good. Jan is vice-president of ISPRS Technical Commission II, associated faculty of the ETH AI Center, director of the PhD graduate school "Data Science" at University of Zurich, and his professorship is part of the Digital Society Initiative at University of Zurich. Together with colleagues, Jan is chairing the CVPR EarthVision workshops.
This seminar is a part of the AI Seminar Series organised by SCIENCE AI Centre. The series highlights advances and challenges in research within Machine Learning, Data Science, and AI. Like the AI Centre itself, the seminar series has a broad scope, covering both new methodological contributions, ground-breaking applications, and impacts on society.