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.
Artur Radzivil is a PhD Research Fellow at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University. He visited Visual Intelligence in Oslo from September to November 2025.
Congratulations to Marius Aasan, who successfully defended his PhD thesis at the University of Oslo on February 10th.
We had the pleasure of talking to UiT students about the career opportunities at SFI Visual Intelligence and UiT at TEKdagen 2026.
Centre Director Robert Jenssen met with Sigrun Aasland, Norwegian Minister of Research and Higher Education, alongside UiT and Aker Nscale representatives to give an update on Aker Nscale's AI Giga Factory in Narvik, Norway.
Zheming Xu is a PhD Research Fellow at Beijing Jiaotong University. She visited Visual Intelligence in Tromsø from September 2025 to January 2026.
Få kvinner søker seg til fag innenfor kunstig intelligens. Det kan skape blindsoner, mener ekspert (Norwegian news story in NRK.no).
Visual Intelligence was represented by Centre Director Robert Jenssen, Associate Professor Kristoffer Wickstrøm, and VI Alumna Sara Björk at the Arctic Frontiers side session "How can AI and satellite collaboration strengthen Arctic resilience?".
Petter Tømmeraas, Director of Data Center Services at Aker Nscale, visited SFI Visual Intelligence to learn more about our research projects and AI startups established by former UiT students.
We happily welcome Keyne Oei and Boye Sjo as new PhD Research Fellows at SFI Visual Intelligence in Tromsø and Oslo respectively.
Congratulations to Børge Solli Andreassen, who successfully defended his PhD thesis at the University of Oslo on December 18th 2025.
Attracting 280 international AI researchers, the Northern Lights Deep Learning Conference (NLDL) 2026 was successfully organized from January 5th to 9th 2026 at UiT The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø, Norway.
Visual Intelligence hosted a special NLDL 2026 mentoring session for young researchers with Professor Mihaela van der Schaar – a globally renowned AI researcher and expert
Centre Director and NLDL General Chair Robert Jenssen was interviewed by NRK about this year's Northern Lights Deep Learning Conference.
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270 KI-eksperter fra nært og fjernt møtes ved UiT for å dele siste forskningsnytt. Et av formålene er å styrke internasjonale bånd og samarbeid på tvers av det globale KI-miljøet (Norwegian news article on uit.no)
Med ferske millioner på konto skal Senter for pasientnær kunstig intelligens (SPKI) ved UNN bidra i et stort nasjonalt KI-prosjekt de neste fire årene (News article on unn.no)
We happily welcome Zijun Sun as a new Doctoral Research Fellow at SFI Visual Intelligence in Tromsø, Norway.
The Visual Intelligence Management Team, Robert Jenssen, Line Eikvil, Anne Solberg, and Inger Solheim, wishes everyone a happy holiday season and new year!
Several of our researchers represented SFI Visual Intelligence at EurIPS 2025 – the NeurIPS-endorsed European AI conference.
Congratulations to Senior Research Scientist Anders Waldeland, who was awarded the Digital Trailblazer Award 2025 at the Dig X Subsurface conference in Oslo, Norway.
Researchers have developed an artificial intelligence that can automatically measure the heart's structure – both quickly and accurately (Popular science article on sciencenorway.no)