Francisco Mena | Machine Learning | Best Researcher Award

Posted on by sciencefather

Mr. Francisco Mena | Machine Learning | Best Researcher Award

PhD Candidate at University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany

Francisco Mena is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU), Germany, with a strong academic and research background in deep learning, multi-view learning, and unsupervised learning. His work focuses on developing scalable and generalizable machine learning models, particularly in complex real-world domains like Earth observation and astroinformatics, where missing data and multi-source fusion are major challenges. Francisco’s research emphasizes minimizing human intervention and domain dependency, aiming for methods that are more robust, adaptable, and explainable.

Publication Profile 

Orcid

Educational Background 🎓

  • PhD in Computer Science
    University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU), Germany
    Jan. 2022 – Present
    Thesis: Data Fusion in Multi-view Learning for Earth Observation Applications with Missing Views

  • Magíster en Ciencias de la Ingeniería Informática (Equivalent to M.Sc. in Computer Engineering)
    Federico Santa María Technical University (UTFSM), Valparaíso, Chile
    Mar. 2018 – Sep. 2020
    Thesis: Mixture Models for Learning in Crowdsourcing Scenarios
    GPA: 94%

  • Ingeniería Civil en Informática (Equivalent to Computer Engineering)
    UTFSM, Santiago, Chile
    Mar. 2013 – Sep. 2020
    GPA: 80% | Rank: Top 10% – 4th of 66 students

  • Licenciado en Ciencias de la Ingeniería Informática
    UTFSM, Santiago, Chile
    Mar. 2013 – Nov. 2017

  • High School
    New Little College, Santiago, Chile
    Mar. 2008 – Dec. 2012

Professional Experience 💼

  • Student Research Assistant – German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Germany
    Mar. 2022 – Present
    Working on Earth observation data for crop yield prediction using Python, QGIS, and Slurm.

  • Lecturer – University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU), Germany
    Oct. 2024 – Apr. 2025
    Teaching: Machine Learning for Earth Observation within a broader Data Science course.

  • Visiting PhD Researcher – Inria Montpellier, France
    Nov. 2024 – Jan. 2025
    Research in multi-modal co-learning, mutual distillation, and multi-task learning.

  • Academic Roles – Federico Santa María Technical University (UTFSM), Chile
    2014 – 2021
    Lecturer & Assistant roles in:

    • Computational Statistics

    • Artificial Neural Networks

    • Machine Learning

    • Operations Research

    • Mathematics Lab

  • Research Assistant – Chilean Virtual Observatory (ChiVO)
    Jul. 2017 – May 2018
    Astroinformatics projects involving ALMA/ESO datasets and Python-based data reduction.

  • Developer Intern – Farmacia Las Rosas S.A., Chile
    Jan. 2017 – Mar. 2017
    Desktop software automation using Python and QT.

Research Interests 🔬

  • Machine Learning Foundations:
    Deep Learning, Variational Autoencoders, Neural Networks, Representation Learning, Deep Clustering

  • Methodologies:
    Multi-view Learning, Data Fusion, Latent Variable Modeling, Dimensionality Reduction, Unsupervised Learning

  • Applications:
    Earth Observation, Remote Sensing, Vegetation Monitoring, Crowdsourcing, Neural Information Retrieval, Astroinformatics

Awards and Honors🏆✨

  • PhD Scholarship – RPTU, Germany (2022–present)

  • Scientific Initiation Award (PIIC) – UTFSM, Chile (2019–2020)

  • Master Program Scholarship – UTFSM, Chile (2018–2020)

  • Honor Roll – UTFSM, Chile (2013)

Conclusion🌟

Francisco Mena is a dedicated machine learning researcher whose work blends theoretical rigor with impactful real-world applications. His interdisciplinary approach spans remote sensing, astroinformatics, and crowdsourcing, focusing on creating models that are resilient to missing data, efficient at scale, and minimally reliant on labeled supervision. With a growing publication record, international experience, and teaching background, he is well-positioned to make significant contributions to both academia and applied AI research.

Publications 📚

  1. 📄 Missing data as augmentation in the Earth Observation domain: A multi-view learning approach
    Neurocomputing, 2025-07
    DOI: 10.1016/j.neucom.2025.130175
    👥 Francisco Mena, Diego Arenas, Andreas Dengel

  2. 🌾 Adaptive fusion of multi-modal remote sensing data for optimal sub-field crop yield prediction
    Remote Sensing of Environment, 2025-03
    DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2024.114547
    👥 Francisco Mena et al.

  3. 🛰️ Common Practices and Taxonomy in Deep Multiview Fusion for Remote Sensing Applications
    IEEE JSTARS, 2024
    DOI: 10.1109/JSTARS.2024.3361556
    👥 Francisco Mena, Diego Arenas, Marlon Nuske, Andreas Dengel

  4. 📉 Impact Assessment of Missing Data in Model Predictions for Earth Observation Applications
    IGARSS Proceedings, 2024
    DOI: 10.1109/IGARSS53475.2024.10640375
    👥 Francisco Mena et al.

  5. 🛰️ Assessment of Sentinel-2 Spatial and Temporal Coverage Based on the Scene Classification Layer
    IGARSS 2024, 2024-07-07
    DOI: 10.1109/igarss53475.2024.10642213
    👥 Cristhian Sanchez, Francisco Mena et al.

  6. 🌽 Crop Yield Prediction: An Operational Approach to Crop Yield Modeling on Field and Subfield Level with ML Models
    IGARSS 2023
    DOI: 10.1109/IGARSS52108.2023.10283302
    👥 Francisco Mena et al.

  7. 🧩 Feature Attribution Methods for Multivariate Time-Series Explainability in Remote Sensing
    IGARSS 2023
    DOI: 10.1109/IGARSS52108.2023.10282120
    👥 Francisco Mena et al.

  8. 🧹 Influence of Data Cleaning Techniques on Sub-Field Yield Predictions
    IGARSS 2023
    DOI: 10.1109/IGARSS52108.2023.10282955
    👥 Francisco Mena et al.

  9. 🗂️ A Comparative Assessment of Multi-View Fusion Learning For Crop Classification
    IGARSS 2023, 2023-07-16
    DOI: 10.1109/igarss52108.2023.10282138
    👥 Francisco Mena, Diego Arenas, Marlon Nuske, Andreas Dengel

  10. 📊 Predicting Crop Yield with Machine Learning: Input Modalities and Models on Field and Sub-Field Level
    IGARSS 2023, 2023-07-16
    DOI: 10.1109/igarss52108.2023.10282318
    👥 Francisco Mena et al.

Dehong Gao | Artificial Intelligence | Outstanding Scientist Award

Posted on by sciencefather

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dehong Gao | Artificial Intelligence | Outstanding Scientist Award

Associate Professor at Northwestern Polytechnical University, China

Dehong Gao is a distinguished expert in the fields of natural language processing, machine learning, and large language models. With over a decade of research and practical experience, he has made significant contributions to advertising technologies, multimodal AI models, and AI-driven e-commerce solutions. Gao currently leads groundbreaking work on multimodal pre-training models, including the award-winning 70B-FashionGPT model. As an associate professor at Northwestern Polytechnical University and a distinguished researcher at Zhejiang University of Technology, Gao continues to advance AI research, particularly in the areas of large language models, multimodal learning, and cross-lingual search. 🚀📚💡

Publication Profile : 

Scopus

Educational Background 🎓

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science from Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2014-2022), under the supervision of Li Wenjie.
  • Master’s in Automation from Northwestern Polytechnical University (2010).
  • Bachelor’s in Automation from Northwestern Polytechnical University (2007).

Professional Experience 💼

Dehong Gao’s career spans both academia and industry. He is currently an Associate Professor at the School of Cyberspace Security at Northwestern Polytechnical University. He also serves as a Distinguished Researcher at the Zhejiang University of Technology Artificial Intelligence Innovation Institute. Gao previously held the position of Senior Algorithm Expert (P8) at Alibaba Group, where he led a team of over 20 full-time algorithm engineers and contributed to the development of large-scale machine translation and AI-driven e-commerce solutions. As an expert in Alibaba AIR Project, Gao has been instrumental in technical breakthroughs related to large model technologies, fine-tuning multimodal models, and advancing AI-based search and advertising systems. 💻📈

Research Interests 🔬

Gao’s research interests are focused on:

  • Large Language Models (LLMs) and Multimodal Learning 🌐🤖
  • Natural Language Processing: Information retrieval, recommendation systems, sentiment analysis, and automated summarization 📑🔍
  • E-commerce AI: Developing search algorithms and multilingual representation learning for cross-border e-commerce applications 🌏🛒
  • Federated Learning and AI-driven personalization in business settings 🔒🤖

He has authored and co-authored several influential papers and has been a leading figure in the development of multimodal AI models for industries such as fashion, e-commerce, and healthcare. His work continues to push the boundaries of AI application in real-world environments. 🏆📚

Publications 📚

  1. Gao, D., Chen, K., Chen, B., et al. (2024). LLMs-based Machine Translation for E-commerce. Expert Systems with Applications, Volume 258 (SCI Zone 1, Top Journal).
  2. Chen, K., Chen, B., Gao, D., Dai, H., et al. (2024). General2Specialized LLMs Translation for E-commerce. The Web Conference (WWW), short paper (CCF-A).
  3. Shen, G., Sun, S., Gao, D., Yang, L., et al. (2023). EdgeNet: Encoder-decoder generative Network for Auction Design in E-commerce Online Advertising. The 32nd ACM International Conference on Information & Knowledge Management (CIKM), (CCF-B).
  4. Gao, D., Ma, Y., Liu, S., Song, M., Jin, L., et al. (2024). FashionGPT: LLM Instruction Fine-tuning with Multiple LoRA-adapter Fusion. Knowledge-Based Systems, Volume 299 (SCI, Top Journal).
  5. Chen, B., Jin, L., Wang, X., Gao, D., et al. (2023). Unified Vision-Language Representation Modeling for E-Commerce Same-Style Products Retrieval. Industry Track of The Web Conference (WWW), (CCF-A).
  6. Mei, X., Yang, L., Jiang, Z., Cai, X., Gao, D., et al. (2024). An Inductive Reasoning Model Based on Interpretable Logical Rules Over Temporal Knowledge Graphs. Neural Networks, Volume 174, Pages (SCI Zone 1, Top Journal).
  7. Liang, Z., Chen, B., Ran, Z., Wang, Z., Gao, D., et al. (2024). Self-Renewal Prompt Optimizing with Implicit Reasoning. The 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) findings (CCF-A).
  8. Yang, Z., Gao, H., Gao, D., Yang, L., et al. (2024). MLoRA: Multi-Domain Low-Rank Adaptive Network for CTR Prediction. The 18th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys), (CCF-B).
  9. Zhang, X., Wang, D., Gao, D., Jiang, W., et al. (2022). Revisiting Cold-Start Problem in CTR Prediction: Augmenting Embedding via GAN. The 31st ACM International Conference on Information & Knowledge Management (CIKM), (CCF-B).
  10. Zhang, F., Zhang, Z., Gao, D., Zhuang, F., et al. (2022). Mind the Gap: Cross-lingual Information Retrieval with Hierarchical Knowledge Enhancement. The 36th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), (CCF-A).