Hello, I am Ovidiu Csillik and it’s a pleasure to meet you!
I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, working on mapping the health and the future of global forests using remotely sensed data and artificial intelligence. I defended my Ph.D. thesis in less than 3 years, in July 2018, at the University of Salzburg, Austria, having expertise in remote sensing, computer vision, land cover mapping, and time series analysis. My Ph.D. thesis was titled “Spatio-temporal object-based image analysis for land use/land cover mapping” and tackled ideas like improving the accuracy and speed of computer vision workflows, applying object-based machine learning techniques to classify remotely sensed data and analyzing time series of satellite images for crop mapping using advanced machine learning methods.
My past experiences include postdoc positions at Wageningen University and Research, at the Department of Ecology at Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford and at the Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science, Arizona State University, Tempe, as well as a visiting scholar research stay at the University of California, Berkeley, at the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. With a Master degree in Geographic Information Systems and a Bachelor degree in Geography, I am always looking to improve my knowledge and be ahead of the current developments in my research domain.
Between my Master degree and the start of my Ph.D. I founded a company dedicated to GIS services and consulting, named Enjoy Maps. With multiple local, regional and national projects, Enjoy Maps had media appearances on many important media players in Romania. I successfully led projects from local level to European level.
My research is certified by publications in top journals. Check the Publication page for a complete list of papers!
EDUCATION & RESEARCH
2022–present NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Postdoctoral Fellow
2020–2021 Wageningen University & Research, Laboratory of Geo-information Science and Remote Sensing, Postdoc
2018–2019 Arizona State University, Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science, Postdoc
Carnegie Institution for Science, Department of Global Ecology, Stanford, CA, Postdoc
2015–2018 University of Salzburg, Austria, PhD in Remote Sensing
2017 University of California, Berkeley, Visiting Scholar at ESPM Department
2011–2013 West University of Timisoara, Romania, Master degree in Geographical Information Systems
2008–2011 West University of Timisoara, Romania, Bachelor degree in Geography
2004–2008 “Grigore Moisil” High school, Timisoara, Romania, Specialization: Mathematics and Informatics