David Rolnick

A poster with pictures of birds, and the meeting point - SW corner, Balboa Park: https://maps.app.goo.gl/KRCTQ4ZteqKj3jj66

Going to #NeurIPS2025 San Diego? Escape the conference for a couple hours with a morning bird walk in the trails of Balboa Park. 7 am on Thurs, Dec. 4.

We're excited to be part of #COP30 in Brazil with @drolnick.bsky.social, @daviddao.org and Maria João Sousa! We will be part of and organizing several events, starting on Nov 10. To learn more, check our website: www.climatechange.ai/events/cop30

Congratulations to the amazing Priya Donti for this very well-deserved honor!

Recent article! 🌳🌍

Tree semantic segmentation from aerial image time series

👉 doi.org/10.1017/eds....
✍️ Venkatesh Ramesh @arthurouaknine.bsky.social & @drolnick.bsky.social

Research that advances #forest monitoring using #deeplearning on aerial imagery time series.

Postdoctoral Position — Machine Learning and Downscaling to Advance Ecological Applications | Climate Change AI As part of an IVADO initiative on AI and environment, a coalition of Montreal labs is recruiting a postdoctoral researcher for an interdisciplinary project applying state-of-the-art machine learning a...

Postdoc opportunity in collaboration with our lab on downscaling/superresolution for biodiversity, details here:
community.climatechange.ai/c/postdoc/po...

Postdoc position in machine learning & materials discovery | Climate Change AI We have a new postdoc opening at Mila in materials discovery. Details attached!

We have a new postdoc opening at Mila in machine learning for materials discovery!

Details at: community.climatechange.ai/c/postdoc/po...

@mila-quebec.bsky.social ‬ @alexhergar.bsky.social

With Gabriel Tseng, @anthonyfuller.bsky.social, Marlena Reil, Henry Herzog, Patrick Beukema, Favyen Bastani, James R. Green, Evan Shelhamer, Hannah Kerner

Our remote sensing foundation model Galileo has been accepted to ICML 2025!

Galileo outperforms state-of-the-art across different input data modalities and shapes, and using it requires only minimal data and compute.

More at:
arxiv.org/abs/2502.09356

Our paper on detecting abandoned oil wells with machine learning, led by @pratinavseth.bsky.social, is accepted at ICML 2025! These wells are a major source of emissions (and groundwater pollution).

More details in the thread, and preprint here: arxiv.org/abs/2410.09032

Mila members David Rolnick, Yuyan Chen and Mélisande Teng have arrived in Panama to test an algorithm to discover new species. Among a team of entomologists and computer scientists, they have installed camera traps to automatically monitor biodiversity. Stay tuned to learn more about their journey!

The call for applications has just been released for #CV4Ecology2026!! This three-week intensive program trains ecologists and conservation practitioners to develop their own AI tools for their own data.

When: Jan 12-30, 2026
Where: SCBI @smconservation.bsky.social

Internship at Mila in machine learning on 3D point clouds for forest monitoring | Climate Change AI See attachment for details!

We have a new internship opportunity in multimodal machine learning for forest monitoring using 3D point clouds. More details here: community.climatechange.ai/c/internship...

To assist in that upskilling, and to foster a community in which those impacted can help each other build AI skills, the CV4Ecology program is organizing a two-week remote workshop in May of 2025 that will teach AI methods to former US public sector conservation scientists.

Data-for-good rapid response team I'm collecting people with data science skills who may want to hear about sporadic opportunities to use their skills for good on short projects. Project themes will center on topics I am connected wit...

I'm organizing a "Data for Good Rapid Response Team", i.e. a set of people who can be mobilized to work on short data science projects to help various groups and organizations. Sign up here if this is of interest to you, and please share with others with data science skills.

AI could revolutionize biodiversity conservation 🌱 A team of McGill researchers found untapped potential to accelerate species discovery, track ecosystems & help meet global conservation targets.

Read more: mcgill.ca/x/iwo

A new study from McGill University researchers, including Mila members Laura J. Pollock and @drolnick.bsky.social, shows that AI can accelerate species discovery, improve ecosystem tracking and help meet global conservation targets.

There have been people less than helpful in my journey here. I wanted to acknowledge those too, bc I know I am not unique in this experience. No thank you to the physics study assoc that made me sing songs about how women couldn't study physics without sleeping with the professor, the day I stepped into university life. No thank you to the 5th year physics student that decided to assign me a stripper name within the first minute of meeting me in the physics coffee corner in my first year. No thank you to the technician that was responsible for onboarding me on the use of the cluster in my third year who raised his eyebrows and asked me if that meant I was some sort of computer girl. No thank you to the senior researcher that sent me utterly inappropriate texts after a conference, then proceeded to apologise months later by telling me they had not been meant for me anyway so no hard feelings remain hopefully And no thank you to him for attending every conference I've been to since. No thank you to the people who told me that it was surprising that I was doing a PhD since I was a girl. No thank you to the man who mistook me for a coffee lady at a conference, and after having to correct him two times that I did not work there, responded with you should consider it. No thank you to the researcher that asked me what I was wearing underneath my outfit during a conference. No thank you to the physicist who declared to a room full of other physicists that biologists don't know how to design an experiment. No thank you to the people who have called me scary instead of strong and intimidating instead of intelligent. And finally, no thank you to the exec board of the TU Delft, whose knee-jerk reaction to being held up a mirror about the social safety at the university, was to sue the party holding up the mirror instead of looking at the problems they highlighted. ... You have made me feel like I do not belong in science & I cannot forgive you for that.

A friend included this anti-acknowledgement section on her PhD thesis. She also added the proposition: “Systematic bullying and undermining of girls and women in STEM starts early on and is the reason why they do not stay in science and related fields.”
Absurd we still need to go through this
🧪👩‍🔬

Announcing our new paper (led by @ArthurOuaknine) compiling data on AI for forests, a fast-growing area important for land management, biodiversity preservation, and nature-based climate solutions.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I'm honored to have been selected as one of this year's Sloan Research Fellows. Thank you to the @sloanfoundation.bsky.social and to all the incredible students, engineers, citizen scientists, and other collaborators that make our research possible!

A number of winged elephants

Curious about what this picture has to do with current AI trends? Check out my talk at AI, Science, and Society (Paris AI Action Summit).
www.youtube.com/live/6HDjVnc...

Forum dédié à l’IA durable, à l’Hôtel de Roquelaure YouTube video by Ministères Écologie Territoires

Looking forward to speaking this Tuesday at the Sustainable AI Forum as part of the Paris AI Action Summit. Livestream available here (in English):
www.youtube.com/live/1e3hojU...

Internship in our group at Mila in reinforcement learning + graphs for reducing energy use in buildings.

More info and submit an application by Jan 13 here:
forms.gle/TCChXnvSAHqz...

Questions? Email donna.vakalis@mila.quebec with [intern!] in the subject line.

We're excited to announce the next edition of our workshop "Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning" at #ICLR2025 in Singapore!

▶️ Mentorship program deadline: Dec 27, 2024
▶️ Paper submission deadline: Jan 31, 2025

Learn more & submit: climatechange.ai/events/iclr2...

The Climate Change AI workshop at NeurIPS tomorrow will be livestreamed for free, even if you weren't able to register for NeurIPS (which was oversubscribed this year)!

Schmidt Sciences to Award $12 Million to Advance Research on Beneficial AI AI2050 fellowships recognize scholars working to create AI for a better world

I'm honored to be included in this year's list of AI2050 Fellows! Looking forward to engaging with this great cohort of researchers on AI for the benefit of humanity.

www.schmidtsciences.org/schmidt-scie...

To crop or not to crop: Comparing whole‐image and cropped classification on a large dataset of camera trap images In this work, the authors assess the hypothesis that classifying animals cropped from camera trap images using a species-agnostic detector yields better accuracy than classifying whole images. We fin....

New paper! We've just published a manuscript covering technical details of the AI models behind Wildlife Insights, with systematic analysis at scale of cropping vs not cropping in #CameraTrap image classifiers 🫎🦌🦒🦘🪿🫏🐘🐫🦬🦛🐿️

ietresearch.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1049/...

Congrats to @aduvalinho.bsky.social, @vict0rsch.bsky.social and the Entalpic team!

ICLR reviewer: Thanks, you've addressed all my concerns and the paper's great!
Same ICLR reviewer: I'm still going to keep my score at Borderline Accept.

Un algorithme au secours des insectes | Découverte Les populations d'insectes s'effondrent à un rythme sans précédent, et il manque de scientifiques pour documenter ce déclin.

Thanks to Découverte / Radio-Canada for featuring our work on AI for insects, with the Montreal Insectarium and Automated Monitoring of Insects consortium!
ici.radio-canada.ca/tele/decouve...

We are looking for new PhD / MSc students! Machine learning innovations for tackling climate change - e.g. remote sensing, climate informatics, materials discovery, & biodiversity monitoring. Apply by submitting applications to *both* Mila Quebec AI Institute (by Dec 1) & McGill University (Dec 15)