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