Our team and mission

This position is based at the ESA Centre for Earth Observation (ESRIN) – Frascati, Italy

The Φ-lab in ESRIN aims to accelerate the future of Earth Observation (EO) by helping the European industry and research communities to rapidly adopt disruptive technologies including Artificial Intelligence (AI), distributed systems etc. The lab is split into two offices Φ-Explore (Research focus) and Φ-Invest (Commercial focus).

The Φ-Explore Office aims to support the impact of new technologies such as AI.

For further information visit our web site: http://www.esa.int

Field(s) of activity for the internship

Topic: Earth Observation (EO) Data Analytics with Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The emergence of big data creates new opportunities but also new challenges for scientists, business, data and software providers to make sense of the vast and diverse amount of data by capitalizing on powerful techniques such as Artificial Intelligence (AI). Until recently AI was mainly a restricted field occupied by experts and scientists, but today it is routinely used in everyday life without us even noticing it, in applications ranging from recommendation engines, language services, face recognition and autonomous vehicles. Over the last decade, Machine Learning has gone through a major revolution, through the unique convergence of powerful computing capability, easy access to large volumes of data, and the availability of new algorithms enabling robust training of large-scale deep neural networks.

The application of AI to EO data is just at its infancy and today focusses mainly on computer vision techniques applied to Very High-Resolution satellite imagery, while there are certainly many areas of Earth Science and big data analytics, which could increasingly benefit from AI, leading to entire new types of value chain, scientific knowledge and innovative EO services.

In this context, this traineeship opportunity aims to further explore the wider potential AI4EO applications, in particular through a development of new AI methods and tools across applications, ranging from multi-sensor data fusion, edge computing, automatic change detection, transfer learning, up to mining of hyperspectral data. This includes adapting existing AI algorithms and tools to take account of the specific characteristics of EO data sets, physical measurement principles, and apply them to EO data applications (e.g. Sentinel).

You will be part of a multi-disciplinary team of researchers and data scientists passionate about innovation, and work within an inspiring and collaborative open-space environment. You will help the team rapidly prototype and evaluate AI solutions for application to EO data sets and challenges, and also prepare training data sets to be used for development and evaluation of AI algorithms.

Behavioural competencies

Result Orientation
Operational Efficiency
Fostering Cooperation
Relationship Management
Continuous Improvement
Forward Thinking

Education

You must have student status and be enrolled at university for the entire duration of the internship. You should preferably be in your final or second to last year of a university course at master’s level in a technical or scientific discipline.

Additional requirements

The working languages of the Agency are English and French. A good knowledge of one of these is required. Knowledge of another Member State language would be an asset.

Additional Requirements:

• Applicants should have recently completed, or be in their final year of a University course at Masters Level (or equivalent) in a technical or scientific discipline. e.g. computer science, mathematics, data analytics, or relevant engineering discipline
• Experience with general purpose programming languages (e.g. Python) and deep learning frameworks (e.g. Tensorflow, PyTorch)
• Natural curiosity and a passion for new subjects and research areas, including AI, EO, and New Space
• Good interpersonal and communication skills and should be able to work in a multi- cultural environment as part of a team