Postgraduate Research Scholarship in Marine Robotics

The Postgraduate Research Scholarship in Marine Robotics has been developed to support an outstanding postgraduate research student in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Sydney to undertake research in marine robotics. Quantitative estimates of marine environmental health are needed for scientific studies, design and management of protected areas, and regulatory compliance of industrial activity in the ocean. Australia is collecting seafloor images at increasing rates using underwater robots and other imaging systems, but expert annotations are not keeping up meaning that insights from this data are not being realised. This project will develop Machine Learning (ML) tools that leverage an already existing, large repository of labelled and unlabelled underwater imagery to train classifiers to derive quantitative estimates of species abundance and distributions for a variety of stakeholders. The project is relatively unique in that it provides opportunities to work alongside industry partners and academic researchers, as well as a pool of expert marine scientists who have a vested interest in using machine learning tools to solve their real-world image annotation challenges. The scholarship provides an annual stipend allowance equivalent to the University of Sydney RTP rate (indexed annually) for up to three years and six months, subject to satisfactory academic performance. Recipients will have a background in machine learning or computer vision and will have the opportunity to participate in fieldwork designed to validate the developed tools and to collect new datasets using the latest marine robotic platforms.