Internship – Computer Vision & Plastic Detection

Mission to Metrics

The mission of The Ocean Cleanup is to develop and scale advanced technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. In the River Team, we aim to intercept floating plastic from being emitted into the oceans through the world's most polluted rivers.

The Analysis & Performance team contributes to the success of The Ocean Cleanup by ensuring that the decision-making processes in Rivers are grounded in reliable data. In the Analysis & Performance team, we use cameras to monitor plastic debris and areas of plastic accumulation both on and around the river, as well as within our operations.

Your role is to improve and implement our algorithm for detecting plastic patches on the river surface. This dives into the fields of object detection and segmentation and provides the opportunity to combine research with real-world applications.

Responsibilities

Your main responsibilities include:

• Analyzing and testing different segmentation models and assessing the quality of these segmentation models based on different locations.
• Proposing and implementing a pipeline for retraining and fine-tuning a selected model on new and unseen data and locations.
• Building a time series of segmentation results and analyze these time series for outliers and consistency. Application of the segmentation model on operational data.

Professional Qualifications

• Enrolled in an MSc-level computer science, data science, physics, or similar track
• Experienced with Python
• Affinity for deep learning and object detection
• Fluent in English

Personal Qualifications

• Eager to explore and apply the latest research in the field, with a focus on transforming insights into practical applications
• Curious, creative, and determined to deliver
• Unafraid to dive deep into technical complexities
• Eye for detail
• Flexible team player
• Strong written and verbal communication skills

Note: The candidate must be enrolled at a University (MSc program) during the internship.

Duration: 6 months

Starting from: September/October 2024

Work permit needed: European Union