Michele Volpi

Michele Volpi

Lead Data Scientist
Academia
(Alumni)

Michele received a Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences from the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) in 2013. He was then a visiting postdoc in the CALVIN group, Institute of Perception, Action and Behaviour of the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland (2014-2016). He then joined the Multimodal Remote Sensing and the Geocomputation groups at the Geography department of the University of Zurich, Switzerland (2016-2017). His main research activities were at the interface of computer vision, machine and deep learning for the extraction of information from aerial photos, satellite optical images and geospatial data in general.

Projects

BioDetect

Completed
Deep Learning for Biodiversity Detection and Classification
Energy, Climate & Environment

Inter-Detect

In Progress
Quantifying Plant-Pollinator Interactions Using Computer Vision
Energy, Climate & Environment

DNAi

In Progress
High throughput eDNA processing using artificial intelligence for ecosystem monitoring
Energy, Climate & Environment

PHENO-MINE

In Progress
Pheno-Mine: Extracting dynamic ideotypes from seasonal image time series of wheat taken in the field
Energy, Climate & Environment

DATSSFLOW

In Progress
Data Science and Mass Movement Seismology: Towards the Next Generation of Debris Flow Warning
Energy, Climate & Environment

DIMPEO

In Progress
Detecting drought impacts on forests in earth observation data
Energy, Climate & Environment

SPEED2ZERO

In Progress
Sustainable pathways towards net zero Switzerland
Energy, Climate & Environment

EAGLE

In Progress
Enhanced understanding of Alpine mass movements Gathered through machine LEarning
Energy, Climate & Environment

ADOPT

In Progress
AI for Detecting Ocean Plastic Pollution with Tracking
Energy, Climate & Environment

DeepDown

In Progress
Multivariate climate downscaling using deep learning models
Energy, Climate & Environment

CLIMIS4AVAL

In Progress
Real-time cleansing of snow and weather data for operational avalanche forecasting
Energy, Climate & Environment

deepLNAfrica

In Progress
Mapping changes in urban informal settlements in sub-Saharan Africa using deep learning and open-access satellite imagery
Humanities & Social Sciences

ArcticNAP

Completed
Arctic climate change: Exploring the Natural Aerosol baseline for improved model Predictions
Energy, Climate & Environment

DEAPSnow

Completed
Improving snow avalanche forecasting by data-driven automated predictions
Energy, Climate & Environment

MSEI

Completed
Molecular structure elucidation by integrating different data mining strategies
Chemistry

ACE-DATA

Completed
Delivering Added-value To Antarctica
Energy, Climate & Environment

Publications

Pérez-Guillén, C.; Techel, F.; Volpi, M.; Van Herwijnen, A. "Assessing the performance and explainability of an avalanche danger forecast model" Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 2025 View publication
Boyd Pernov, J.; Aeberhard, W. H.; Volpi, M.; Harris, E.; Hohermuth, B.; Ishino, S.; Henne, S.; Im, U.; Quinn, P. K.; Upchurch, L. M.; et al. "Data-driven modeling of environmental factors influencing Arctic methanesulfonic acid aerosol concentrations" Submitted to Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 2024 View publication
Stalder, S.; Volpi, M.; Büttner, N.; Law, S.; Harttgen, K.; Suel, E. "Self-supervised learning unveils urban change from street-level images" Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 112 102156 2024 View publication
Boyd Pernov, J.; Harris, E.; Volpi, M.; Baumgartner, T.; Hohermuth, B.; Henne, S.; Aeberhard, W. H.; Becagli, S.; Quinn, P. K.; Traversi, R.; et al. "Pan-Arctic Methanesulfonic Acid Aerosol: Source regions, atmospheric drivers, and future projections" npj Climate and Atmospheric Science 7 166 1-18 2024 View publication
Maissen, A.; Techel, F.; Volpi, M. "A three-stage model pipeline predicting regional avalanche danger in Switzerland (RAvaFcast v1.0.0): a decision-support tool for operational avalanche forecasting" Geoscientific Model Development 17 21.0 7569-7593 2024 View publication
Svoboda, J.; Ruesch, M.; Liechti, D.; Jones, C.; Volpi, M.; Zehnder, M.; Schweizer, J. "Towards deep learning solutions for classification of automated snow height measurements (CleanSnow v1.0.0)" Preprint 2024 View publication
Gomes, D.; Purves, R. S.; Volpi, M. "Fine-Tuning Transformers for Toponym Resolution: A Contextual Embedding Approach to Candidate Ranking." GeoExT@ ECIR 43–51 2024 View publication
Simeon, A.; Pérez-Guillén, C.; Volpi, M.; Seupel, C.; Van Herwijnen, A. "Assessing avalanche activity in seismic data with modern machine learning methods." 2024 View publication
Simeon, A.; Pérez-Guillén, C.; Volpi, M.; Seupel, C.; van Herwijnen, A. "Autoencoder-based feature extraction for the automatic detection of snow avalanches in seismic data" Geosci. Model Dev. Discuss. 2024 1-37 2024 View publication
Svoboda, J.; Zehnder, M.; Ruesch, M.; Liechti, D.; Jones, C.; Volpi, M.; Rixen, C.; Schweizer, J. "Classification of Snow Depth Measurements for tracking plant phenological shifts in Alpine regions" NeurIPS 2024 Workshop on Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning 2024 View publication
Hendrick, M.; Techel, F.; Volpi, M.; Olevski, T.; Pérez-Guillén, C.; van Herwijnen, A.; Schweizer, J. "Automated prediction of wet-snow avalanche activity in the Swiss Alps" Journal of Glaciology 1-14 2023 View publication
Paitz, P.; Chmiel, M.; Husmann, L.; Volpi, M.; Kamper, F.; Walter, F. "Towards an unsupervised generic seismic detector for hazardous mass-movements: a data-driven approach" EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts 2023 View publication
Paitz, P.; Chmiel, M.; Husmann, L.; Volpi, M.; Kamper, F.; Walter, F. "Generic seismic mass-movement detection leveraging unsupervised statistical learning methods" Machine Learning in Geo-, Ocean and Space Sciences. IUGG General Assembly IUGG23-0742 2023 View publication
Perez, C.; Seupel, C.; Simeon, A.; Volpi, M.; van Herwijnen, A. "Automated discrimination of seismo-acoustic avalanche signals" EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts EGU23-12211 2023 View publication
Harris, E.; Gasser, L.; Volpi, M.; Perez-Cruz, F.; Bjelić, S.; Obozinski, G. "Harnessing data science to improve molecular structure elucidation from tandem mass spectrometry" Structural Chemistry 34 5.0 1935-1950 2023 View publication
Roškar, R.; Ramakrishnan, C.; Volpi, M.; Perez-Cruz, F.; Alisafaee, M.; Fischer, P.; Gasser, L.; Harris, E. J.; Ozdemir, F.; Paitz, P.; et al. "Renku: a platform for sustainable data science" Proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems 42161–42173 2023 View publication
Li, D.; Gajardo, J.; Volpi, M.; Defraeye, T. "Using machine learning to generate an open-access cropland map from satellite images time series in the Indian Himalayan region" Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment 101057 2023 View publication
Pérez-Guillén, C.; Techel, F.; Hendrick, M.; Volpi, M.; van Herwijnen, A.; Olevski, T.; Obozinski, G.; Pérez-Cruz, F.; Schweizer, J. "Weather, snowpack and danger ratings data for automated avalanche danger level predictions" Available at: https://www.doi.org/10.16904/envidat.330 2022 View publication
Hendrick, M.; Techel, F.; Volpi, M.; Olevski, T.; Pérez-Guillén, C.; van Herwijnen, A.; Schweizer, J. "Automated prediction of wet-snow avalanche activity in Switzerland" EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts EGU22-7403 2022 View publication
Pérez-Guillén, C.; Techel, F.; Hendrick, M.; Volpi, M.; van Herwijnen, A.; Olevski, T.; Obozinski, G.; Pérez-Cruz, F.; Schweizer, J. "Data-driven automated predictions of the avalanche danger level for dry-snow conditions in Switzerland" Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 22 2031–2056 2022 View publication
Stalder, S.; Perraudin, N.; Achanta, R.; Perez-Cruz, F.; Volpi, M. "What You See is What You Classify: Black Box Attributions" Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2022 View publication
Hartmann, M. C.; Schott, M.; Dsouza, A.; Metz, Y.; Volpi, M.; Purves, R. S. "A text and image analysis workflow using citizen science data to extract relevant social media records: Combining red kite observations from Flickr, eBird and iNaturalist" Ecological Informatics 71 101782.0 2022 View publication
Landwehr, S.; Volpi, M.; et al.; Volpi, M. "Exploring the coupled ocean and atmosphere system with a data science approach applied to observations from the Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition" Earth System Dynamics 12 1295–1369 2021 View publication
Pegoraro, L.; Volpi, M.; Matthews, B.; Graham, C. "BioDetect: automated image processing for ecological monitoring" 50th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland 2021 View publication
Thomas, J.; Alba, M.; Bouillet, E.; Novellino, A.; Pina Estany, C.; Volpi, M. "How to stop re-inventing the wheel: a data management case study" International Conference on Marine Data and Information Systems 2021 View publication
Pérez-Guillén, C.; Hendrick, M.; Techel, F.; van Herwijnen, A.; Volpi, M.; Olevski, T.; Pérez-Cruz, F.; Obozinski, G.; Schweizer, J. "Data-driven automatic predictions of avalanche danger in Switzerland" EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts EGU21–6154 2021 View publication
Volpi, M.; Landwehr, S.; Thomas, J.; Schmale, J. "ERA-5 reanalysis results interpolated onto the five-minute average cruise track of the Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition (ACE) during the austral summer of 2016/2017" Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3831980 2020 View publication
Volpi, M.; Landwehr, S.; Thomas, J.; Schmale, J. "Distance to the nearest land/coastline (including small subantarctic islands) for the five-minute average cruise track of the Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition (ACE) during the austral summer of 2016/2017" Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3832045 2020 View publication
Landwehr, S.; Volpi, M.; Derkani, M. H.; Nelli, F.; Alberello, A.; Toffoli, A.; Gysel-Beer, M.; Modini, R. L.; Schmale, J. "Sea State and Boundary Layer Stability Limit Sea Spray Aerosol Lifetime over the Southern Ocean" Authorea Preprints 2020 View publication
Landwehr, S.; Volpi, M.; Perez-Cruz, F.; Schmale, J. "Sparse Principal Component Analysis as a tool for the exploration of heterogeneous datasets from multidisciplinary field experiments" Data Science in Climate and Climate Impact Research 2020 View publication
Acheson, E.; Volpi, M.; Purves, R. S. "Machine learning for cross-gazetteer matching of natural features" International Journal of Geographical Information Science 34 4.0 708-734 2020 View publication
Roscher, R.; Volpi, M.; Mallet, C.; Drees, L.; Wegner, J. D. "SemCity Toulouse: A benchmark for building instance segmentation in satellite images" ISPRS Annals of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences 5 109-116 2020 View publication
Landwehr, S.; Modini, R.; Schmale, J.; Volpi, M.; Toffoli, A.; Thurnherr, I.; Aemisegger, F.; Wernli, H. "Investigation of sea spray source functions with remote ocean aerosol size spectra measurements from the Antarctic Circumnavigation Experiment" SOLAS open science conference 2019 View publication
Thomas, J.; Landwehr, S.; Volpi, M.; Schmale, J. "ACE-DATA: Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition – Delivering Added value To Antarctica (Version 1.0)" Preprint 2019 View publication
Roth, S. I. B.; Leiterer, R.; Volpi, M.; Celio, E.; Schaepman, M.; Joerg, P. "Automated detection of individual clove trees for yield quantification in north-eastern Madagascar based on multi-spectral satellite data" Remote Sensing of Environment 221 144-156 2019 View publication
Volpi, M. "Semantic interpretation of optical remote sensing data by computer vision and machine learning" Keynote talk at Applied Machine Learning Days (AMLD), Lausanne (CH) 2019 View publication
Volpi, M.; Tuia, D. "Deep multi-task learning for a geographically-regularized semantic segmentation of aerial images" ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 144 48-60 2018 View publication
Wegner, J. D.; Roscher, R.; Volpi, M.; Veronesi, F. "Foreword to the Special Issue on Machine Learning for Geospatial Data Analysis" ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information 7 147.0 2018 View publication
Milani, G.; Volpi, M.; Tonolla, D.; Doering, M.; Robinson, C.; Kneubühler, M.; Schaepman, M. "Robust Quantification of Riverine Land Cover Dynamics by High-Resolution Remote Sensing" Remote Sensing of Environment 217 491-505 2018 View publication

Mentioned in

November 4, 2024

MeteoSwiss and the SDSC join forces

MeteoSwiss and the SDSC join forces

The Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss) and the Swiss Data Science Center have signed a framework agreement.
March 6, 2024

RAvaFcast | Automating regional avalanche danger prediction in Switzerland

RAvaFcast | Automating regional avalanche danger prediction in Switzerland

RAvaFcast is a data-driven model pipeline developed for automated regional avalanche danger forecasting in Switzerland.
November 30, 2023

La Liberté | AI to better detect plastic waste at sea [In French]

La Liberté | AI to better detect plastic waste at sea [In French]

Scientists at EPFL and Wageningen University have developed an AI model that recognizes plastic objects floating on water in satellite images.
November 30, 2023

A simple dashboard facilitates the work of parliamentary services

A simple dashboard facilitates the work of parliamentary services

The SDSC has developed a dashboard with which parliamentary services can calculate the composition of the committees of the National Council.
October 31, 2023

Street2Vec | Self-supervised learning unveils change in urban housing from street-level images

Street2Vec | Self-supervised learning unveils change in urban housing from street-level images

It is difficult to effectively monitor and track progress in urban housing. We attempt to overcome these limitations by utilizing self-supervised learning with over 15 million street-level images taken between 2008 and 2021 to measure change in London.
October 25, 2023

Computerworld | AI predicts avalanche danger [In German]

Computerworld | AI predicts avalanche danger [In German]

The AI project "DEAPSnow" takes avalanche forecasting to a whole new level.
October 9, 2023

DEAPSnow | AI for avalanche forecasting

DEAPSnow | AI for avalanche forecasting

“DEAPSnow”, a project by the Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC) and the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support avalanche forecasters in creating the avalanche bulletin. This product provides essential information about the prevailing snow and avalanche conditions in the Swiss Alps and the Jura.
September 23, 2022

What you see is what you classify: black box attributions

What you see is what you classify: black box attributions

The lack of transparency of black-box models is a fundamental problem in modern Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. This work focuses on how to unbox deep learning models for image classification problems.
October 28, 2021

DEAPSnow | Supporting avalanche forecasting in the Swiss Alps using machine learning

DEAPSnow | Supporting avalanche forecasting in the Swiss Alps using machine learning

The creation of avalanche bulletins is still a largely expert-driven and manual task. DEAPSnow aims to explore the feasibility of using data-driven models to support the process of avalanche danger forecast.
May 2, 2019

ACE-DATA | Antarctic circumnavigation expedition – delivering added value to Antarctica

ACE-DATA | Antarctic circumnavigation expedition – delivering added value to Antarctica

Understanding the complexity of the Earth systems and our climate is important to be able to make predictions about how they may change in the future. To do this, scientists use models which describe the relevant processes.

Case Studies

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