Postdoctoral Research Associate
Biography
BACKGROUND
Originally from Eugene, Oregon, Dr. Vasha DuTell is a computer vision researcher with a strong foundation in human visual perception and representation learning. She earned her PhD in Vision Science from UC Berkeley, where she worked with Drs. Bruno Olshausen and Martin Banks on natural scene statistics, eye tracking, and human vision modeling. She spent time at MIT CSAIL as a postdoctoral fellow researching spatiotemporal and peripheral vision modeling with Drs. Ruth Rosenholtz and Bill Freeman. Alongside her research, Vasha serves as lecturing faculty in the UC Berkeley School of Information, where she teaches computer vision.
RESEARCH
As a postdoc at LAE, Vasha applies computer vision and deep learning to systems for contrail detection and tracking. Her work includes developing segmentation models to detect contrails from satellite imagery. Additionally, she is leveraging the high spatial and temporal resolution of ground-camera systems to capture contrails from below. Vasha’s research focuses on improving the accuracy and efficiency of contrail detection, enhancing understanding of their formation, lifetime, and environmental impact, and supporting strategies for their mitigation.