People

Prof. Dr. Jan Dirk Wegner  

Jan D. Wegner

(University of Zurich)

Jan is founder and head of the EcoVision Lab. His main interest is in developing original, data-driven methods at the interface of machine learning, computer vision, and remote sensing to solve open questions in ecology.

Dr. Vivien Sainte Fare Garnot

Vivien

Vivien is a PostDoc at the Institute for Computational Science at the University of Zurich and is affiliated with the EcoVision Lab since 2022. He received his PhD in Geospatial Computer Vision in January 2022 at the French mapping agency (IGN, Gustave Eiffel University). His thesis explored novel deep learning architectures for crop type mapping from satellite image time series. Among other aspects, it focused on leveraging the temporal dimension of such data with attention mechanisms. The thesis also proposed a novel method to leverage the hierarchical structure of the crop type taxonomy, and showed how to address crop type mapping as a panoptic segmentation task. For his PostDoc, he is involved in the development of machine learning methods for forest monitoring, and other ecological applications. More broadly, Vivien is interested in methods that leverage remote sensing data to improve our understanding of the Earth’s evolution.


M.Sc. Olivier Dietrich

Olivier Dietrich

Olivier joined the EcoVision Lab as a PhD student in 2022. Prior to this, he completed a B.Sc. degree in microengineering at EPFL and a M.Sc. degree in Robotics, System, and Control at ETH Zürich, where he already collaborated with the EcoVision Lab as a research assistant. During his master studies, Olivier also worked for a year in an AI consulting start-up and conducted his master thesis on genomic data and graph neural networks at the University of Cambridge. His main research focuses on combining satellite imagery and computer vision techniques to assist humanitarian organizations in their work in armed conflicts. More broadly, Olivier is interested in leveraging remote sensing and machine learning to help tackle important environmental and societal issues.

M.Sc. Nikolai Kalischek

Nikolai Kalischek

Nikolai has joined the EcoVision Lab as a PhD student in 2019. Before moving to Zurich, he received his M.Sc. degree in Computer Science with a specialism in Deep Learning from University of Ulm, Germany. During his master thesis, he worked on combining Deep Domain Adaptation and Facial Expression Recognition for static and sequence-based data. His main research interests are in the wide area of deep learning such as Transfer Learning. Nikolai's current research is focused on developing self-learning algorithms for area segmentation using satellite imagery. In time of drastic climate change he believes that university research can have a great impact on solving enviromental problems.

M.Sc. Alexander Becker

Alex Becker

Alex is a PhD student at ETH Zurich who joined the EcoVision Lab in 2020. Previously, he obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Informatics from the Technical University of Munich, specializing in (deep) machine learning for computer vision. At EcoVision Lab, he is focusing on automated analyses of multispectral satellite imagery with the aim to facilitate sustainable and climate-smart agriculture. Alex is convinced that recent advances in artificial intelligence and image understanding can be highly beneficial for tackling current and future environmental challenges.

M.Sc. Kaan Karaman

Kaan Karaman

Kaan Karaman is a PhD student at the Institute for Computational Science at the University of Zurich and is affiliated with the EcoVision Lab since 2021. He received his Master's degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE) at Middle East Technical University (METU) in February 2021 after completing two BSc degrees with high honors in both EEE and Physics at METU. His research interests include but are not limited to computer vision, deep metric learning, and remote sensing.

M.Sc. Marc Katzenmaier

Marc Katzenmaier

Marc is a PhD student at the Institute for Computational Science at the University of Zurich and is affiliated with the EcoVision Lab since 2021. He received his Master’s degree in Robotics, Cognition, Intelligence from the Technical University of Munich. His research interests are computer vision and machine learning. Currently he is working on tree cell instance segmentation using microscopic images.

M.Sc. Yuchang Jiang

Yuchang Jiang

Yuchang Jiang is a PhD student at the Institute for Computational Science at the University of Zurich and is affiliated with the EcoVision Lab since 2021. She received the M.Sc degree in Geomatics from ETH Zurich in 2021 and obtained a B.Sc degree in Geomatics from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2019. During her master thesis, she worked on tracking small fast-moving objects in challenging environments across multiple cameras. During her PhD, she is working on global vegetation parameter assessments with satellite images. Her research interests lie in computer vision, deep learning, and remote sensing.

Alumni

  • Dr. Yujia Liu (Defense: January 2024)
  • Dr. Rodrigo Caye Daudt
  • Dr. Mehmet Özgür Türkoglu (Defense: June 2023)
  • Dr. Priyanka Chaudhary (Defense: June 2023)
  • Dr. Riccardo De Lutio (PhD Defense: Juni 2023)
  • Dr. Andrés Rodríguez (Defense: September 2022 at ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
  • Dr. Stefania Russo
  • Dr. Nico Lang (Defense: May 2022 at ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
  • Dr. Stefano D'Aronco
  • Dr. Ahmed Nassar (Defense: August 2021 at Université Bretagne Sud, France)
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