EOC scientist Dr Celia Baumhoer was awarded the 1922 DLR Science Prize for her outstanding scientific achievements. This prize is awarded annually to a maximum of two scientists.
Dr Celia Baumhoer (l.) and Prof. Jakob Runge with the chairman of the DLR Executive Board, Prof. Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla (r.)
Celia Baumhoer was honoured for her paper “Environmental drivers of circum-Antarctic glacier and ice shelf front retreat over the last two decades”. With the help of Deep Learning she was able to map the entire Antarctic ice sheet for the past 20 Jahre and thus for the first time to quantify changes in glacier and ice shelf fronts. With her approach she was able to analyse a very large number of radar images and automatically identify in them glacier and ice shelf fronts.
Up to now, changes in glaciers were mapped manually. Analyses of the entire Antarctic covering several years were not possible in practice with this extremely time-consuming method. This was the starting point for Dr Celia Baumhoer’s deliberations. With her work she impressively shows how artificial intelligence can be employed to achieve a better understanding of polar regions and assist in comprehending the effects of climate change.
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Video of the presentation to Dr Baumhoer ( in german)