Hello, world! I am a Lecturer and permanent researcher in the People and Nature Lab at University College London (UCL), working at the intersection of Earth
observation, machine learning, and ecology to answer
questions about the distribution of species and underlying
processes.
I previously worked in the Jetz lab at
Yale
University, as well as the ECEO lab at EPFL,
Switzerland, where I researched methods to automatically
identify animals from above—using aerial imagery.
Ecologists have been contributing for decades to our understanding of where individuals of species thrive and where they don't. It turns out that most of these findings about biological nature are things we acknowledge that we don't know—perhaps more so than in any other science field (reference needed). Nonetheless, the process understanding amassed by ecologists is huge and severely underused in current methodologies.
In my research, I explore ways to integrate such latent knowledge into modelling approaches in new ways, stepping beyond hard and limiting assumptions of existing heuristics.
I am interested in developing and providing solutions for nature and wildlife conservation, particularly using machine learning, computer vision in conjunction with aerial or camera trap imagery. One of my major research directives to this end is the automated and interactive localisation of mammals (elephants, rhino, etc.) in aerial images. Click for more infos!
My research interests are highly interdisciplinary and
span more general vision, remote sensing and GIS topics.
In detail, I also work on domain adaptation, weakly- and
self-supervised learning, meta-learning, land cover and
land use mapping, and more.
Besides that, I have
been frequently involved in teaching (BSc and MSc
courses in GIS and machine learning for spatial data),
and I administered and maintained the computing
infrastructure of my previous research groups, including
some GPU servers back in the Netherlands.
As part of the Map of Life Rapid Assessments team, I am thrilled to
announce that we have made second place in the XPRIZE Rainforest Competition this year!
This competition was five years in the making, with the aim of
advancing technology for biodiversity and ecosystem monitoring in
challenging areas like tropical rainforests.
Each of the six finalist teams from around the globe was given 24 hours to
acquire data of a predefined patch of Brazilian rainforest. The location was
kept secret until a few days before the finals in June; teams were
prohibited from setting foot into the area and had to gather data with
technology. A subsequent 48 hour window was given to analyse any data and
identify as many species as possible.
Our team employed a vast array of
technologies, from imaging and acoustic drones to air and water eDNA
collectors, and employed a human-in-the-loop scheme with taxon experts to
make sense of this data.
As head of the data science team, I was
responsible for data pre-processing, prediction (with state-of-the-art deep
learning methods), and organisation in the cloud. Our solution worked fast
and flawlessly, detecting fine-grained species in aerial images and acoustic
recordings, estimated forest functional traits in ultra high-resolution
remote sensing data, and provided innovations in all aspects, from 3D data
matching to open set species recognition.
More about our efforts at Yale.
It is my pleasure to
announce that I have officially started my new, permanent position as
Lecturer and Researcher in the People and Nature Lab at University College London (UCL)! I will be deepening my
research on data science, Machine and Deep Learning, and Earth observation,
to answer questions about our natural environment and protection thereof.
Please stay tuned if you are interested in working in these spheres and
using technology for good, as I may be hiring soon!
UCL Profile Page
I am originally from Zurich, Switzerland and also did my BSc and MSc there (University of Zurich). I completed my PhD at Wageningen University, Netherlands, with distinction "cum laude" (PhD thesis). A recording of my PhD defence from April 6, 2020, can be found here for your amusement.
I have also worked in the U.S. at Microsoft in summer 2019.
Here's a brief summary of my educational activities:
October 2022 - July 2024 | Postdoctoral position at BGC, Yale University, United States. |
October 2020 - September 2022 | Postdoctoral position at ECEO, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, campus Sion, Switzerland. |
April 7, 2020 - September 2020 | Postdoctoral position at GRS, WUR |
May - August 2019 | Research Intern at Microsoft in the context of the AI for Earth initiative. Development of the AIDE platform. |
Aug 2017 - April 6, 2020 | PhD candidate (cont'd) at the Laboratory of Geo-Information Science and Remote Sensing (GRS), Wageningen University (WUR), the Netherlands. |
Feb 2016 - Jul 2017 | PhD candidate at the Remote Sensing Laboratories, University of Zurich. |
2015 - 2016 | Intern at the Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation, ETH Zurich. Development of the GeoVITe geodata download portal. |
2014 - 2015 | Intern at the Federal Office of Topography swisstopo. Development of the Swiss Map Mobile data backbone. |
2009 - 2014 | BSc and MSc in Geography (Remote Sensing and GIS) and Computer Science at University of Zurich, Switzerland. |
Feel free to contact me for a full CV.
Just a few of the amazing people I have or had the honour to work with (in no particular order):