MARINA VICENS-MIQUEL

GRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANT AT CONRAD BLUCHER INSTITUTE AND AI2ES

DEEP LEARNING, COASTAL AI, REMOTE SENSING

Marina Vicens Miquel is a Geospatial Computer Science Ph.D. Student at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi working under Dr. Medrano and Dr. Tissot. She works as a graduate research assistant at Conrad Blucher Institute (CBI), and she is part of the NSF AI Institute for Research on Trustworthy AI in Weather, Climate, and Coastal Oceanography (AI2ES). Her research focuses on developing new deep learning methods to solve coastal problems. Her dissertation goal is to predict beach inundation 72h in advance. Additionally, of predicting inundation, the coordinates where the water will reach (the runup) will also be predicted. As the intermediate steps for predicting inundation, Marina is developing a new method to detect the wet/dry shoreline using both UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) and stationary camera imagery. Moreover, she is also working on creating a deep learning model to improve the current water level predictions.

Before starting her Ph.D., she graduated with a double major in computer science and mathematics at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (2020). During that time, she was also part of the Women’s Tennis Team at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, competing at the NCAA Division I. Additionally, Marina found time to start her research career in AI (Artificial Intelligence). In 2018, she was a co-author of the article “Flooded Area Detection from UAS Images Based on Densely Connected Recurrent Neural Networks” published in the IGARSS 2018 Journal and presented at the 2018 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium. Moreover, in 2020 she worked as a research assistant in Lone Start UAS Center of Excellence and Innovation (LSUASC). She worked on developing a new deep learning method with UAS imagery to classify building damage from natural disasters.

After obtaining her doctoral degree, Marina would like to develop her research skills further by being a post-doctoral student working on AI. After, she would like to pursue a faculty position at a university. There, she will push her deep learning research further while creating her research laboratory and mentoring the next generation of researchers. Her main goal is to push further the science of AI by being part of the development of a trustworthy and ethical AI.