Artificial Intelligence Job Opportunities: University of Florida

Four tenure-track Assistant Professor faculty positions are announced and soon will begin accepting applications at the University of Florida.  We will begin interviewing excellent candidates as their applications come in. Interested candidates should email me (c.angelini@ufl.edu) expressing their intent to apply so I can share the application link with these candidates as soon as it goes live.

These positions, described briefly below, are all linked to a new initiative with the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, the Center for Coastal Solutions (visit this page to learn more) for which I am the Director. Candidates eager to engage in research focused on a wide range of challenges facing our coastal communities and ecosystems are encouraged to apply, although past experience in this domain space is not required. We are particularly interested in researchers able to develop and apply innovative approaches to improving how we monitor and model coastal hazards (e.g. sea level rise, pathogen outbreaks, harmful algae blooms, invasive species) and their impacts on coastal environments, economies and public health.

  • AI Methods for Graphs: Candidates are sought whose research area is the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods for graphs and graph-based data.
  • Signal, Image, and Video Processing: Candidates are sought whose research focuses on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Signal, Image, and/or Video (SIV) processing.
  • Reinforcement Learning: Candidates are sought whose research focus includes reinforcement learning in general, and especially those who are interested in collaborative research with the Center for Coastal Solutions.
  • Underwater Robotics: Candidates are sought whose research focus include robotics and autonomous systems, with particular expertise in underwater robotics.
As you may be aware, UF is building an AI program with both breadth and depth: The depth to produce top Ph.D.’s in AI technology and the breadth to infuse AI into UF’s entire curriculum so that all students, graduate and undergraduate, regardless of their major, develop basic awareness and competence in how AI is transforming their future careers. This will arm every University of Florida student to help Florida build a tech-driven, high-wage economy in fields as diverse as medicine, agriculture, defense, manufacturing, software development, education, business, and more. The impact will be far reaching – the University of Florida student equipped with this knowledge will work independently with AI and data science to create new markets, new technologies, and an increasingly inclusive, ethical and just future.


To support this ambitious vision, the University of Florida has committed to hiring 100 AI-focused faculty across the entire university. These faculty are being sought as members of interdisciplinary teams that span multiple colleges, where UF will leverage its existing expertise as well as new faculty to tackle some of society’s most pressing challenges. The positions listed above are part of this larger University-wide effort and we anticipate that the faculty we hire will find a wealth of opportunity for high-impact, collaborative research, student training and curriculum development in joining our ranks. Our CCS faculty are particularly collaborative and eager to engage new talented colleagues in the spirit of this larger effort.

SI Remote Sensing: Big Earth Data & Remote Sensing in Coastal Environments

Remote Sensing has launched  a Special Issue (SI) entitled “Big Earth Data and Remote Sensing in Coastal Environments“. Coastal environments are steadily subjected to natural and anthropogenic stresses such as hurricanes, floods, sea level rise and coastal development. Big Earth Data is a new frontier in earth and information sciences to study our living planet from excessive earth observations. This SI solicits papers highlighting its recent advancements with a focus on addressing various environmental problems by means of innovative data collection, processing, and analytical solutions in coastal zone.

We invite you to contribute a research paper or review More details about the Special Issue are available at www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing/special_issues/.... This SI is also in alignment with the 12th International Symposium on Digital Earth (ISDE’12) will be held in Salzburg, Austria, July 2021 (https://digitalearth2021.org/). Conference attendees publishing their full papers in this SI will receive 20% discount on the Article Processing Charge (APC). The submission deadline is on 31 October, 2021.

Guest Editors:

Dr. Cuizhen (Susan) Wang, Professor, Department of Geography, University of South Carolina; Cwang@mailbox.sc.edu

Dr. Li Zhang, Professor, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences; zhangli@aircas.ac.cn

Dr. Deepak Mishra, Professor & Associate Head, Department of Geography, University of Georgia; dmishra@uga.edu

AmeriGEO: Inter-American Academy – 2 training Opportunities

The Capacity Building community for AmeriGEO is proud to announce the first two training opportunities featured on the Inter-American Academy of Geosciences & Applications on behalf of a growing network of public and private institutions, academia, and commercial partners:

1) Flood Monitoring Using Synthetic Aperture Radar Data (Register Here)

2) Engaging with Indigenous Peoples (Register Here)

Full course details and guidance on how to register can be found in the attachments to this email. The Capacity Building community encourages you to explore the academy site and to disseminate this information amongst your community.

If you have any questions regarding the Academy, please contact the AmeriGEO Secretariat (albert.degarmo@noaa.gov).

Special Sessions at European Geosciences Union Meeting!

Two sessions have been organized by World Water Quality Alliance and GEO AquaWatch members at the next European Geosciences Union (EGU) virtual General Assembly for your abstract submission. The [extended] deadline for abstract submission is 15 January 2021, 13:00 CET.

SESSION 1: HS6.9: “From short-term detection to long-term projections: complementing water quality assessments by combining modelling and remote sensing”

This session focuses on regional and global water quality research where remote sensing and modelling are combined in order to complement a water quality assessment compared to one based on monitoring data only. This would cover studies such as on Covid-19 arising on short-term as well as long-time developments such as eutrophication. The following topics are of particular interest for this session:

  • Processing water quality data from remote sensing products across scales
  • Comparing near-real time remote sensing information with baseline
  • conditions obtained from modelling
  • Complementing results from modelling and remote sensing
  • Remote sensing facilitating water quality model development and modelling

For more information see: https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU21/session/39516

Convener team: Martina Flörke (Ruhr-University Bochum), Ilona Bärlund (UFZ), Stefan Simis (Plymouth Marine Laboratory) and Ting Tang (IIASA)

 SESION 2: HS2.2.4: “Drivers and impacts of freshwater salinisation: from data to modelling approaches across spatio-temporal scales”

If you’re working on topics relating to freshwater salinisation – we are especially interested in research quantifying and predicting historic to future salinisation patterns, drivers and impacts at catchment to global scales, using both data and/or model-driven approaches – then please consider submitting to our session! Contributions including – but not limited to – any of the following topics are of particular interest for this session:

  • Surface water and groundwater interactions and its effects on salinity dynamics
  • Impacts of hydrological extremes and seasonality on salinity levels of freshwater resources
  • Human and hydro-climatic drivers of freshwater salinisation across different spatial and temporal scales
  • Implications of inland salinity for ecosystem health and sectoral water use
  • Applications of surface and/or groundwater in-situ and remote sensing data, and/or data-driven models to determine salinity concentrations across multiple scales
  • Global change (e.g. climate change, land use change) impacts on future freshwater salinisation
  • Assessment of management and adaptation measures to salinity changes

Our invited speaker is Miguel Cañedo-Argüelles Iglesias of Barcelona University. For more information see: https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU21/session/39649

Convener team: Josefin Thorslund (Stockholm University), Martina Flörke (Ruhr-University Bochum), Sujay Kaushal and Michelle van Vliet (Utrecht University)

CEOS webinars – Analysis Ready Data/Synthetic Aperture Radar

Registration is required!

The LSI-VC series on CEOS Analysis Ready Data for Land (CARD4L) isscheduled for February 1-2, 2021.  The webinar series is being organised as a means to strengthen the dialogue between CEOS and the broader community on the topic of ARD (ceos.org/ard), and to explore what interfaces and cooperative activities are needed to increase data use, choice and flexibility for users.

 This second webinar will cover an introduction to the CARD4L specifications for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors, and provide some examples of actual uptake of CARD4L SAR products by the EO community, both public and private. The agenda will include significant time for discussion to promote dialogue between participants. Duration 75 minutes.

To accommodate participation at decent hours across most time zones the webinar will be repeated during two time slots 12 hours apart:

Time slot 1:

     February 1, 2021 (Mon): 15:00-AKST/ 16:00-PST / 19:00-EST / 21:00-ART

     February 2, 2021 (Tue): 08:00-CST / 09:00-JST / 11:00-AEDT

Time slot 2:

     February 2, 2021 (Tue): 07:00-EST / 09:00-ART / 12:00-UTC / 13:00-CET / 15:30-IST / 20:00-CST / 21:00-JST / 23:00-AEDT

 All are welcome to join. More information and a registration form can be found here. Connection details will be shared with all registered participants in due course. The CEOS ARD website has further background information and links to the CEOS ARD Strategy and CARD4L Product Family Specifications:

 http://ceos.org/ard/