Abstract:  We devise multiview tomography from space. This talk will show the First Light of CloudCT, the very first image taken since we launched our first satellite. This opens opportunities for scientific observations and technologies,  can transform climate research and potentially even affect medical X-ray CT.  Tasks and solutions involve both novel imaging hardware and computational algorithms, based on machine learning and differential rendering. The key idea is that advanced computing enable computed tomography of volumetric scenes, based scattered radiation.  CloudCT, funded by the ERC, involves 10 nano-satellites to fly in an unprecedented formation, to capture the same scene (cloud fields) from multiple views simultaneously. We encounter challenges of  polarimetric self-calibration in orbit, and estimation of 3D volumetric distribution of microphysical properties.

Bio:  Prof. Yoav Schechner, heads the Asher Space Research Inst. and is a faculty member at the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer  Engineering, Technion. He is a Principal Investigator and Coordinator of the ERC CloudCT space project, and is on the science team of two additional space-imaging projects, C3IEL (by ISA/CNES) and MAIA (by NASA/ASI). He was a Research Scientist at Columbia U., and a Visiting Associate in Caltech, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and MIT.  His main interests are diverse forms of computational imaging.  We won the Best Paper Award, ICCP 2013+2018, Best Student Paper Award, CVPR 2017, Distinguished Teaching Awards, Technion, Fumio Okano Best 3D Paper Award, and others. He trained in physics (BA+MSc) and EE (PhD). He is the Mark and Diane Seiden Chair in Science and a Landau Fellow – supported by the Taub Foundation.

Sponsor:
The VASC seminar is generously sponsored by HeyGen, an all-in-one
AI-powered video generation platform that leverages advances in
computer vision, generative modeling, and multimodal learning to make
high-quality video creation both scalable and accessible.