From the left: Sigurd Almli Hanssen and Adrian Duric
We happily welcome Sigurd Almli Hanssen and Adrian Duric as new PhD Candidates at SFI Visual Intelligence's hubs in Tromsø and Oslo respectively.
We happily welcome Sigurd Almli Hanssen and Adrian Duric as new PhD Candidates at SFI Visual Intelligence's hubs in Tromsø and Oslo respectively.
By Petter Bjørklund, Communications Officer at SFI Visual Intelligence
Both Hanssen and Duric recently started their doctoral research positions at SFI Visual Intelligence. Hanssen's project is tied to the centre's "Earth observation" innovation area, while Duric's project is connected to the "Marine science" innovation area.
Hanssen is originally from Evenskjer, a town near Harstad, Norway. He graduated with a master's degree in Applied Physics and Mathematics from UiT The Arctic University of Norway in Spring 2025. His thesis focused on how to apply diffusion models for oil spill detection, in collaboration with industry partner Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT). Building upon his master's thesis, Hanssen's PhD project will focus on using satellite imagery and machine learning for sustainable oil spill monitoring.
Satellite images used for environmental monitoring are often huge in size. Current methods, which slice the images into smaller, more manageable patches, tend to remove the context in which the patches exist in. A core idea of the project is to research methods which allow us to reincorporate the large-scale context of these images.
"This could hopefully reduce some sources of false alarms – that is, when a detection system reports an oil spill even though no actual spill is present. This is critical as false alarms, especially far from shore, can be quite expensive and resource-intensive to investigate," Hanssen explains.
Hanssen says it's inspiring to work with what he deems as an interesting and accomplished group of researchers, both at KSAT and UiT.
"Having worked for years with manual image analysis, I really appreciate the importance of and effect I can have through my research, which I find really exciting," says Hanssen.
Duric is from Oslo, Norway and has a master's degree in Robotics and Intelligent Systems from the University of Oslo, specializing in AI and machine learning. His thesis, written in collaboration with the Simula Research Laboratory, focused on using explanations generated by explainable AI techniques as additional data features to enhance the deep learning models' prediction performance.
His PhD project focuses on developing and utilizing the latest deep learning advances to improve performance on various image recognition tasks within marine imaging. Echosounder data captured from Norwegian waters, which is used to estimate different fish populations at specific locations, will have an important focus.
"From a more technical aspect, I will work on several different research topics that contribute in different ways towards the project: foundation models, distrubuted ML and compression, representation learning and explainable AI being some of them," Duric explains.
Duric says he's eager to produce high-impact contributions that can help society, both on a scientific and applied level.
"This is something that drives me and continues to motivate me every day, and a main reason I decided to pursue a PhD in the first place. I really look forward to collaborating with my colleagues and other fellow researchers," Duric says.
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Visual Intelligence co-organized and attended the "Foundations of Arctic AI and Generative Forecasting": an inaugural workshop in the P1 Arctic AI program.
PhD Candidates Solveig Thrun and Christian Salomonsen attended the Datacloud Global Congress' Talent in Tech programme, which invited emerging talent to a unique programme designed to inspire, educate, and connect young professionals with senior leaders from global tech giants.
We warmly welcome Georgios Leontidis as a new Professor at SFI Visual Intelligence's hub at UiT The Arctic University of Norway.
Centre Director Robert Jenssen was interviewed by Norsk rikskringkasting (NRK) about the Japan-Norway AI Innovation Forum in Tokyo, Japan.
En ny AI-løsning utviklet ved UiT kan gjøre det enklere å avdekke feilrapportering og ulovlig fiske. Nå skal Norges Råfisklag teste teknologien i praktisk bruk (News article on kystogfjord.no)
Principal Investigator Kristoffer Wickstrøm was interviewed by Norsk rikskringkasting (NRK) about the Artificial Intelligence Day at UiT- The Arctic University of Norway.
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En ny, åpent tilgjengelig KI-modell kan endre hvordan geologer tolker seismikk. Den norske grunnmodellen lover raskere analyser, lavere terskel for innovasjon og nye måter å forstå undergrunnen på.
Centre Director Robert Jenssen was interviewed by Norsk rikskringkasting (NRK) about AI in fisheries and this year's UArctic (University of the Arctic) Congress on the Faroe Islands.
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Professor and AI expert Robert Jenssen is attending the Japan-Norway AI Innovation Forum and Japan-Norway Research Symposium, two high-level meetings with Norwegian and Japanese government leaders, business actors and researchers.
Visual Intelligence researchers Solveig Thrun and Kristoffer Wickstrøm took their research out of the lab and to Tromsø city centre as part of Pint of Science 2026.
Subsurface Digital Manager and former Visual Intelligence board member Cathrine Tegnander will serve as the elected leader of Visual Intelligence's board.
The Call for Papers and Abstracts for the Northern Lights Deep Learning (NLDL) Conference 2027 is officially announced – with submission deadlines on August 7th and Mid-September 2026 respectively.
The field of Visual Intelligence is continuously transforming. Chief Research Scientist Arnt-Børre Salberg dives deeper into the current trends in the field of visual intelligence as of early 2026.
Generativ kunstig intelligens er imponerende, men ikke alltid så nyttig til å løse industrielle problemer (Norwegian op-ed in digi.no).
Congratulations to Marit Dagny Kristine Jenssen, who successfully defended her PhD thesis at UiT The Arctic University of Norway on April 10th
The NCS model, a seismic foundation model trained on data from the Norwegian data repository for subsurface data, is now available as an open-source model, allowing anyone to download, utilize, and further develop the model.
The Visual Intelligence Annual Report 2025, highlighting the centre's progress, activities, achieved innovations, staff, funding, and publications for 2025, is now available to read on our websites.
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Congratulations to Centre Director Robert Jenssen, who received UiT's Research and Development Award at the university's annual celebration.