Distinguished Seminar Series on Data Science & Artificial Intelligence - "AI and Data Science in Earth Observation" by Prof. Xiaoxiang ZHU
Research Seminar
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Date
22 Apr 2025
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Organiser
Department of Computing
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Time
15:00 - 16:00
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Venue
Online via Zoom / FJ301
Speaker
Prof. Xiaoxiang ZHU
Summary
Geoinformation derived from Earth observation satellite data is indispensable for tackling grand societal challenges, such as urbanization, climate change, and the UN’s SDGs. Furthermore, Earth observation has irreversibly arrived in the Big Data era, e.g. with ESA’s Sentinel satellites and with the blooming of NewSpace companies. This requires not only new technological approaches to manage and process large amounts of data but also new analysis methods. Here, methods of data science and artificial intelligence, such as machine learning, become indispensable. This talk showcases how innovative machine learning methods and big data analytics solutions can significantly improve the retrieval of large-scale geo-information from Earth observation data, and consequently lead to breakthroughs in geoscientific and environmental research.
Keynote Speaker
Prof. Xiaoxiang ZHU
Head
Chair of Data Science in Earth Observation
TUM School of Engineering and Design
Technical University of Munich
Germany
Prof. Xiaoxiang Zhu received the M.Sc., Dr.Ing., and Habilitation degrees in signal processing from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Munich, Germany, in 2008, 2011, and 2013, respectively. She was a Guest Scientist or a Visiting Professor with the Italian National Research Council (CNR-IREA), Naples, Italy, in 2009; Fudan University, Shanghai, China, in 2014; The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, in 2015; and the University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA, in 2016. Since 2019, she has been a Co-Coordinator of the Munich Data Science Research School, TUM. Since 2019, she has been the Head of the Helmholtz Artificial Intelligence—Research Field “Aeronautics, Space and Transport.” Since May 2020, she has been the Director of the International Future AI Lab “AI4EO—Artificial Intelligence for Earth Observation: Reasoning, Uncertainties, Ethics and Beyond,” Munich. Since October 2020, she has been the Co-Director of the Munich Data Science Institute (MDSI), TUM. She is currently a Professor of data science in Earth observation (former: Signal Processing in Earth Observation) with TUM and the Head of the Department “EO Data Science,” Remote Sensing Technology Institute, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Weßling, Germany. She is also an AI professor at ESA’s Phi-Lab, Frascati, Italy. Her main research interests are remote sensing and Earth observation, signal processing, machine learning, and data science, with a special application focus on global urban mapping. Prof. Zhu is an IEEE Fellow, a member of the Young Academy (Junge Akademie/Junges Kolleg) at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. She is also an Associate Editor of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING. She serves as an Area Editor for Special Issues of IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.
