SmartSat PhD Webinar November 2025

Hosted by SmartSat Chief Executive Officer, Professor Andy Koronios, join us for the final webinar for 2025 with current SmartSat PhD students and PhD alumni as they showcase their research, the outcomes of their projects and the lessons learned along the way.

This session will feature:

• Zhengyuan Chai (Curtin Universitu) | P3.42s A Framework for Computational Reproducibility in Environmental Science with Support for Machine Learning Applications
  Zhengyuan Chai is currently a PhD candidate in Spatial Sciences at the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University, in Western Australia. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Geographic Information Science, with a dual minor in English, at the School of Resource and Environmental Sciences, Shijiazhuang University. Chai furthered her academic pursuits by obtaining a Master’s degree in Surveying Engineering from the School of Marine Technology and Geomatics, Jiangsu Ocean University. Her research focuses on spatial-temporal data analysis in environmental science. The project aims to develop a framework that incorporates the FAIR Guiding Principles into the machine learning workflow to facilitate the generation of Analysis Ready Data and significantly improve efficiency and reproducibility.

• Raja Ram Aryal (The University of Queensland) | P3.33s Solar Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence (SIF) for plant health/stress and productivity remote sensing applications
  Raja Ram Aryal is a PhD candidate at The University of Queensland. His research focused on improving the 3D structure required for Solar-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence retrieval through a 3D radiative transfer model when monitoring the productivity of Australian forest vegetation across Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) supersites. As an undergrad in Nepal, he studied forestry science and graduated in Photogrammetry and Geoinformatics in Germany. He has worked in the Forest Research and Training Centre under the Ministry of Forest and Environment, Government of Nepal, since 2007. Developing Activity data (Deforestation and Forest Degradation Map) and Emission data (Forest Inventory) required for the Reduced Emission from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) program implemented in Nepal.

• William Meakin (The University of Adelaide/Defence Science & Technology Group) | P2.48s Onboard Machine Learning for Intelligent Satellites
  Will Meakin holds a Bachelor of Software Engineering from The University of South Australia. His honours project involved optimising computer vision algorithms via hardware acceleration for embedded platforms and was awarded the BAE Systems George H B Haskard Prize. This instilled a keen interest in efficient software for emerging technologies to provide enhanced capabilities in restricted environments. After graduating he worked as a research assistant in the Advanced Computing Lab, where he continued to develop skills in computer vision. Despite spending some time exploring other career paths, he ultimately returned to academia and is now pursuing a PhD at the Australian Institute of Machine Learning. His current research focuses on adversarial attacks, emphasising their application to target real-time decision-making remote sensing platforms, as well as their potential for explainable AI.

Please note this event is at 2.30pm ADST (Adelaide) time.