JAE-Intro ICU AIHUB 2023

jae-intro.icu-2023

IFISC announces a grant within the JAE-Intro ICU programme of the CSIC. The JAE-Intro AIHub grants are managed by the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA) but the work is carried out at the institutes offering each grant, at IFISC in the case of the AIHUB-18 grant. These grants are aimed at university students in their final year of their bachelor's or master's degree, as an introduction to scientific research.

More info: https://aihub.csic.es/becas-jae-2023/

Project identifier: AIHUB-18

Project title: Mapping the biodiversity of Mediterranean meadows from satellite images using machine learning techniques

Tutor: Manuel Alberto Matias Muriel (manuel@ifisc.uib-csic.es)

Research group: IFISC (CSIC-UIB)

Abstract: Seagrass meadows, found in coastal marine ecosystems worldwide, play a vital role in enhancing coastal biodiversity, acting as carbon sinks, protecting coastlines from erosion, and improving water clarity through particle sedimentation. Unfortunately, the global seagrass extent has suffered significant losses, with approximately one third already vanished, primarily due to eutrophication, water quality deterioration, habitat destruction, overfishing, and climate change.

This project aims to contribute to the automatic characterization of seagrass biodiversity in the Balearic Islands by utilizing multispectral satellite images. The integration of these images holds the potential to enhance seagrass extent predictions. To achieve this, a supervised neural network will be trained using a biodiversity atlas generated from sonar techniques. Subsequently, the trained neural network will be employed to infer the presence of seagrasses in unmapped areas. Throughout the training process, various hyperparameters of the network will be optimized.

Conditions of the JAE Intro scholarships:

Salary: Total amount of the scholarship will be 4,550 euros equivalent to 7 monthly payments of 650 euros, without additional endowment.
Timetable: 20 hours per week.
A minimum degree grade of 6.80 is required.

In the case of the scholarship offered by IFISC, it is required to be enrolled in the IFISC Master's course 2023-24 and it is understood that the scholarship will start in the second semester.

Applications can be made on the CSIC CONVOCA platform: https://sede.csic.gob.es/icu2023

Deadline: from 21 August to 8 September.

General information on this call can be found at: https://sede.csic.gob.es/icu2023

Please, contact Manuel Matias in the case of queries or further information about this scholarship.