VI industry partner Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT) received an Industrial PhD grant from the Research Council of Norway. The project will be closely connected to Visual Intelligence's "Earth observation" innovation area.
VI industry partner Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT) received an Industrial PhD grant from the Research Council of Norway. The project will be closely connected to Visual Intelligence's "Earth observation" innovation area.
By Petter Bjørklund, Communications Advisor at SFI Visual Intelligence
"Receiving this grant is a great recognition of the high-quality ongoing collaboration between KSAT and Visual Intelligence (VI). It gives us opportunities to further strengthen our already high competence and impact in earth observation and solve new and interesting challenges."
This is what Kristoffer Wickstrøm says about the Industrial PhD grant, which VI partner KSAT received on June 3rd. The Industrial PhD scheme—established by the Research Council of Norway—aims to boost research efforts and long-term competence-building for Norwegian trade and industry through the recruitment of doctoral candidates.
The scheme also seeks to promote closer cooperation between industry and research organizations as a step in promoting knowledge transfer from researchers to society at large.
The Industrial PhD project will focus on using satellite imagery and machine learning for sustainable oil spill monitoring. Early detection of spillage is important for minimizing its negative environmental impact on the marine ecosystem—both at sea and the shores, Wickstrøm says.
"However, the vastness of the ocean makes monitoring difficult. Satellite imagery is key to monitor large areas effectively but requires labor-intensive analyses. Automated solutions based on machine learning can help alleviate the need for manual labor—thus improving the monitoring procedure as a whole," he explains.
While formally a KSAT project, the PhD project will be conducted in close collaboration between the industry partner and the UiT Machine Learning Group. It is also closely tied to VI's "Earth observation" innovation area.
"KSAT and Visual Intelligence has a longstanding and tight collaboration that has led to cutting-edge fundamental and applied research that tackles real-world problems —with direct links to improved products. Working with KSAT—an internationally leading company—is highly beneficial due to the diverse and interesting problem settings that often require completely new technology to tackle efficiently. This leads to interesting research questions and new fundamental research, which in turn leads to improved products and applications," says Wickstrøm.
"This tight collaboration is a win-win situation—both for KSAT and Visual Intelligence as a whole", he adds.
The project is estimated to begin in September/October 2025.
Alba Ordoñez and Anders U. Waldeland presented ongoing work on seismic foundation models and an interactive seismic interpretation engine at EAGE Annual 2025 in Toulouse, France.
Østmo was invited to Abels tårn—one of the largest popular science radio shows in Norway—to answer listener-submitted questions related to artificial Intelligence (AI). The live show took place at Blårock Cafe in Tromsø, Norway on June 12th.
Visual Intelligence Researchers Amund Vedal and Arnt Børre Salberg recently presented ongoing Visual Intelligence research at a plankton-themed workshop organized by the Institute of Marine Research (IMR), Norway
We happily welcome Dennis Adamek, who recently started as a Doctoral Research Fellow at Visual Intelligence in Tromsø in April 2025.
Congratulations to Professor Lars Ailo for receiving the NORA Award for Diversity in AI at the NORA Annual Conference in Halden, Norway.
Teresa Dorszewski is a PhD Candidate at the Section for Cognitive Systems at the Technical University of Denmark. She visited Visual Intelligence in Tromsø from January to April 2025.
Centre Director Robert Jenssen was invited to give a keynote and participate in a panel discussion on AI as critical national infrastructure at the NORA Annual Conference 2025 in Halden, Norway.
Både forskere og statsråd mener kunstig intelligens bør tydelig merkes. Men forlaget som lager puslespillet som ekspertene mener er KI-generert, sier de ikke har noe med hvordan illustratører lager produktene sine (Norwegian news article by NRK)
Researchers have developed an artificial intelligence to map specific immune cells in lung cancer tumors. It can lead to less costly examinations and more personalised cancer treatment (English news story on sciencenorway.no).
The Department of Physics and Technology at UiT The Arctic University of Norway is pleased to announce 4 exciting PhD Fellowships within machine learning at SFI Visual Intelligence. Application deadline: June 17th.
.jpg)
Norsk forskning har utviklet kunstig intelligens som raskt kan analysere lungekreft. Ekspertene forklarer hvordan dette kan bidra til en mer effektiv og persontilpasset behandling (Norwegian news article in vg.no)
We invite submissions presenting new and original research on all aspects of Deep Learning for the Northern Lights Deep Learning (NLDL) Conference 2026.
Partiet Sentrum er blant dem som tar grepet. – Ganske smart, mener valgforsker (Norwegian news article in TV2.no)
Visual Intelligence will be well presented at ICML 2025—one of the leading international academic conference in machine learning—with four newly accepted research papers.
After four years of operation, an international AI expert panel was appointed to assess Visual Intelligence's progress and results. The evaluation was characterized by its excellent remarks on the centre's scientific quality and innovation output.
Senior Researcher Fredrik Dahl recently gave a talk about Norsk Regnesentral's work on developing AI algorithms for automatic analysis of image quality and cancer detection at Norsk Radiografforbund's mammography symposium in Oslo.
Han høster anerkjennelse for sitt forskningsarbeid innen utvikling av mer effektive KI-modeller (Norwegian news article in Nordlys).
.jpg)
Congratulations to associate professor Ali Ramezani-Kebrya for receiving a prestigious FRIPRO grant from the Research Council of Norway!
KI har en tendens til å behandle menn og kvinner ulikt. Ekspert mener teknologien reproduserer gamle fordommer (Norwegian news story in NRK.no)
To UiT-forskere ser store etiske og juridiske problemer ved bruk av kunstig intelligens i kommunal saksbehandling (Norwegian news story in Nordlys.no).