News
Best Geo-information thesis award for WUR student Ellis van de Laak
On Wednesday November 22, 2023, our student Ellis van de Laak received the GIN/NCG award for best MSc thesis. The award was handed out during the 20 year Anniversary Geo-informatie Nederland symposium in the Geofort in Herwijnen. The submissions for this award were coming from all Dutch Universities with a Geo-information Science Master program.
Ellis did her thesis with the Laboratory of Geo-information and Remote Sensing (GRS) at Wageningen University. In her thesis she has investigated ‘Potato virus Y detection in seed potatoes using UAV-based multi-sensor data’. The supervision of the research was a nice collaboration between Ricardo da Silva Torres of the Agricultural Biosystems Engineering group, and Magdalena Smigaj and Lammert Kooistra of the GRS group.
In her research Ellis investigated recognizing virus Y in seed potatoes using hyperspectral, thermal and LiDAR data measured with drones. Using machine learning, she investigated the possibilities for automating the detection of this potato disease. She also looked at the generalizability of the model, the possibilities for early detection, the explainability of AI and the concepts of meta-learning.
The research showed that automated disease detection in field conditions in arable farming is possible with high accuracy. Hopefully, follow-up steps can be made in the future towards operationalizing this, which can contribute to a more sustainable and future-proof agriculture.
We want to congratulate Ellis with this great recognition and wish her a lot of success in the next steps of her career!