April 10, 2026, noon–1:15 p.m.
Online
Join us for a special Island Campus Lecture Series event featuring Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Computer Science and AI Tahiya Chowdhury.
Approximately 75 to 199 million tons of plastic are currently found in the world’s oceans, causing severe environmental, social, economic, and health consequences. In this talk, Prof. Tahiya Chowdury (Computer Science and DavisAI) will discuss how her research group at Colby is exploring ways artificial intelligence tools can help solve the marine debris problem along the coasts of Maine.
By combining aerial imagery collected by drones and AI object detection models, Prof. Chowdury and her team have developed an automated framework that can detect, classify, and map the distribution of ocean debris. This framework was tested with real-world marine debris images on Allen Island with very promising results suggesting this system can be a sustainable solution for current marine debris clean-up initiatives while reducing the human efforts involved in it.
Don’t miss this opportunity to hear directly from faculty helping to shape the future of Colby’s Island Campus.
Register here.
