RSI Research Seminar

Join us every other Monday at noon for lunch and a 30-minute research talk, presented by Resnick Sustainability Institute Graduate Fellows and Caltech researchers funded by the Resnick Sustainability Institute. To see the full schedule of speakers, visit the RSI Research Seminar web page. Seminars currently take place in a hybrid format, both in-person (Jorgensen building first-floor conference room) and via Zoom. For more information and to get the Zoom login info, please reach out to [email protected]

The Summer Workshop on Computer Vision Methods for Ecology (CV4E) Review

Computer vision (CV) can significantly accelerate ecology research by automating the analysis of raw imagery from camera traps, drones, and satellites. While ecologists often have training in statistics and programming, they are rarely exposed to the necessary software engineering,  machine learning and computer vision skills. Our mission is empowering ecologists to apply computer vision methods to analyze accurately and efficiently their data and to scale their research to large datasets.

The Resnick Sustainability Institute Summer Workshop on Computer Vision Methods for Ecology (CV4E), is an intensive 3-week workshop designed to fill this educational gap. It focuses on four key pillars: (1) Teach applied CV as a tool for ecological research by providing instruction and tools for an accessible introduction to applied CV in the context of research in ecology. (2) Empower ecologists to build their own CV-based systems by building intuition, skills and confidence through hands-on exercises, ultimately empowering them to build computer-vision-based solutions to natural world questions. (3) Grow the CV-for-Ecology community, a hub where expert ecologists and expert computer vision scientists can work together to face real-world challenges in conservation and sustainability and exchange ideas and best practices. (4) Provide necessary computational resources to store data, collect annotations, train models, and host solutions during the school, thanks to gifts by Microsoft AI for Earth and Amazon AWS in 2022 and by EleutherAI in 2023 and valued at $50,000/year.

This talk will review the outcomes of the first two sessions (2022 and 2023) and the plans for the third session.