new PhD student: Jakob Schwalb-Willmann

new PhD student: Jakob Schwalb-Willmann

December 13, 2018

This month, Jakob Schwalb-Willmann joined the Department of Remote Sensing as a PhD student. He is investigating the potential of animal-environment interactions for remote-sensing-driven environmental research. In this context, he is interested in the utilization of machine learning to integrate movement tracking and remote sensing data for geonalytical applications, including the detection of phenological events, environmental changes or disruptions in animal-environment interactions.

Jakob has been studying the department’s EAGLE Master program from 2016 to 2018, specializing in Earth Observation and Geoanalysis. He finished his studies with his Master Thesis on the use of animal movement data for environmental research, titled “A deep learning movement prediction framework for identifying anomalies in animal-environment interactions”. During his Master studies, he worked as a student research assistant at the department. To gain knowledge on animal movement analysis and the overlaps between Geoanalysis and Movement Ecology, he visited the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology as an intern. He spent one semester at EURAC research in Bolzano, Italy, where he contributed in the development of an alpine-wide forest change detection system.

From 2013 to 2016, he studied Geography and Sociology (B.Sc.) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich and joined the German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in the context of his Bachelor Thesis research on calculating broadband surface albedo from narrowband sensor data.

you may also like:

Successful fieldwork at the Naryn River in Kyrgyzstan

Successful fieldwork at the Naryn River in Kyrgyzstan

During the last week, EORC PI Florian Betz, EAGLE student Ariana Arguello-Cordero and FluBig team member Magdalena Lauermann from Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt have been on a field campaign in Kyrgyzstan to collect data for the FluBig project dedicated to...

EO4CAM Meeting in Oberpfaffenhofen

EO4CAM Meeting in Oberpfaffenhofen

On 5 June 2025, representatives from the Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Consumer Protection (StMUV), the Bavarian Environment Agency (LfU), and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) met at DLR Oberpfaffenhofen as part of the EO4CAM (Earth Observation...

EORC at the International Africa Festival 2025 in Würzburg

EORC at the International Africa Festival 2025 in Würzburg

If you know Würzburg, you certainly know the International Africa Festival, Europe's largest and oldest festival for African music and culture. For 15 years in a row now, the university tent has been an integral part of the festival. This is where the...

EO4CAM meeting at LfU in Augsburg on grassland in Bavaria

EO4CAM meeting at LfU in Augsburg on grassland in Bavaria

As part of the EO4CAM project (Earth Observation Laboratory for Climate Adaption and Mitigation), representatives of the Bavarian Environment Agency (LfU), the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), and the Earth Observation Research Cluster (EORC) met at the LfU in...

New R Package Enhances UAS Research and Planning

New R Package Enhances UAS Research and Planning

We’re excited to share the development of a new R package created by our PhD student, Antonio Castaneda Gomez, whose contributions to Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS) research continue to impress. Known as the brain behind many of our UAS data collection...