Aasan defending his PhD thesis at the University of Oslo.
Congratulations to Marius Aasan, who successfully defended his PhD thesis at the University of Oslo on February 10th.
Congratulations to Marius Aasan, who successfully defended his PhD thesis at the University of Oslo on February 10th.
By Petter Bjørklund, Communications Officer at SFI Visual Intelligence
Aasan is a PhD Research Fellow at Visual Intelligence and the Digital Signal Processing and Image Analysis Group at the University of Oslo.
His thesis, titled "From Continua to Objecthood: On Tokenization and Perceptual Grouping in Vision", argues that the energy-hungriness and unintelligbility of modern vision systems is not based on how much data machines see, but how they see it. By letting models learn how images naturally divide into meaningful visual regions, Aasan argues that they can focus on structure and form rather than minute pixel-level details.
Aasan's trial lecture was titled From "Convolutions to Transformers: How Modern Vision Models See Images"
Today’s AI vision models can recognize faces, animals, and objects with astonishing accuracy, and they keep improving as we feed them more data and provide them with more computing power. But this progress comes at a price: modern vision systems are increasingly large, energy-hungry, and difficult to interpret or understand.
This thesis argues that the problem is not only how much data machines see, but how they see it. Humans do not analyze images pixel by pixel; instead, we focus on shapes, regions, and relationships in visual scenes. The research presented here shows that artificial intelligence can be convinced to do the same. By letting models learn how images naturally divide into meaningful visual regions, they can focus on structure and form rather than minute pixel-level details.
The result is a new way of building vision systems that are more effective, accurate, and interpretable. As visual AI becomes part of everyday life it becomes increasingly important to develop models that are faster, more transparent, and more sustainable.
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.
.jpg)
Congratulations to Centre Director Robert Jenssen, who received UiT's Research and Development Award at the university's annual celebration.
Visual Intelligence researchers contributed to the Pioneer Centre for AI workshop on Electronic Health Records research. The aim was to strengthen ties between the two centres on EHR-related research.
Tre av studentene i sivilingeniør i Kunstig Intelligens ved UiT skal delta i NM i KI. Slik gikk det da de ble intervjuet ved hjelp av kunstig intelligens (News article in nordlys.no).
.jpg)
Rami Al-Belmpeisi is a PhD Research Fellow in the Visual Computing section at DTU Compute, Technical University of Denmark. He visited Visual Intelligence in Tromsø from November 2025 to February 2026.
Visual Intelligence researchers came to the UiT Open Day to inform the students about UiT's study programme, and inspire them to pursue AI-related studies and career paths.
Congratulations to our colleague Michael Kampffmeyer, who received the Fridtjof Nansen Prize for Young Researchers in 2026.
We happily welcome Rahul Baburajan as a new PhD Research Fellow at SFI Visual Intelligence's hub in Tromsø.
Congratulations to our colleague Sarina Thomas, who has been recognized as one of Norway's Top 50 Women in Tech!
Elisabeth Wetzer forsker på hvordan maskiner kan lære å analysere medisinske bilder – og samtidig forstå hva legene faktisk ser etter (Norwegian news article on dagsavisen.no)
Visual Intelligence researchers organized a preparatory course for UiT AI students who are attending this year's Norwegian AI Championship.
We happily welcome Veronica Lachi and Qing Liu as new Associate Professors at SFI Visual Intelligence.
Artur Radzivil is a PhD Research Fellow at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University. He visited Visual Intelligence in Oslo from September to November 2025.
We had the pleasure of talking to UiT students about the career opportunities at SFI Visual Intelligence and UiT at TEKdagen 2026.