MSCA-IF: Joint application at the University of Granada. Department of Optics

Professor Javier Hernández-Andrés, from the Department of Optics at the University of Granada, welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (MSCA-IF) in 2019 at this University. Please note that applicants must comply with the Mobility Rule (more information: http://sl.ugr.es/09Qg).

Brief description of the institution:

The University of Granada (UGR), founded in 1531, is one of the largest and most important universities in Spain. It serves more than 60000 students per year, including many foreign students, as UGR is the leader host institution in the Erasmus program. UGR, featuring 3650 professors and more than 2000 auxiliary personnel, offers a total of 75 degrees through its 112 departments and 28 centers.

UGR is also a leading institution in research, located in the top 5/10 of Spanish universities by a variety of ranking criteria, such as national R&D projects, fellowships awarded, publications, or international funding. UGR is one of the few Spanish Universities listed in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking (http://www.arwu.org/), and it is also well recognized for its web presence (http://www.4icu.org/top200/).

Internationally, we bet decidedly by our participation in the calls of H2020, both at partner and coordination. For the duration of the Seventh Framework Programme, the UGR has obtained a total of 66 projects, with total funding of 17.97 million euros, and for H2020, until 2015, more than 25 projects with total funding of more than 6 million euros. Our more than 3,000 researchers are grouped into 365 research groups covering all scientific fields and disciplines.

Brief description of the Centre/Research Group

The Color Imaging Lab belongs to the Optics Department at the University of Granada (ranked among the best 300 universities in the world and the second in Spain, according to the Shanghai ranking 2018).

In this department we have carried out research into both classical Colorimetry (e.g. color differences) and Color Vision (e.g. chromatic discrimination) since the beginning of the 1970s. In the 1990s we became interested in both human and computational color constancy. From its origin in 2000 the Color Imaging Lab has focused on the spectrum based color research and novel methods for spectral data analysis and measurement. Our current research topics are: spectral imaging, spectral estimation algorithms, high dynamic range imaging, de-weathering algorithms, human perception, color vision, visual saliency, polarimetric&spectral imaging, new spectral sensors.

In the research group we have four senior permanent staff and several Ph.D. and Post-doc students. Our laboratory is well-equipped for spectral color research with several spectral cameras (hyperspectral and multispectral) and spectroradiometers as well as eye-trackers and a thermal camera. Our university has also the facility to use color and spectral cameras on drones.

Our group is a consortium member of the and Erasmus+ COSI-master programmes. We are very active in international collaboration (i.e. half of our papers have international co-authorship).  In research, we have project funding from the University of Granada, the Regional Government of Andalucia, the Spanish Government and from industrial partners.

Project description

Hyperspectral image dehazing in the visible and infrared ranges for Enhanced Flight Vision Systems

Under haze or fog, the quality of the images is degraded due to the atmosphere, causing the details of the image to be difficult to identify by both an observer and computer vision systems. The techniques to eliminate this degradation, caused by the scattering and absorption of light, named as dehazing techniques, are crucial in various current applications with great scientific and technological interest: air and maritime transport, surveillance, driver assistance systems, remote sensing.

Dehazing is a multidisciplinary challenge, since it requires the knowledge of several fields: meteorology, physical models to predict how light is affected by the atmosphere, and computer vision & image processing to recover the parameters of the scene. The methods of dehazing that provide better results are those based on a physical model, whose objective is to reverse the atmospheric degradation. For most scientific and technological applications of dehazing it is essential that the methods work automatically, in real time, without the interaction of the user and without knowing atmospheric parameters.

We proposed in 2015 a method based on the dichromatic model of atmospheric scattering and on the constancy of the response ratio of a camera's RGB sensors. This method only requires a previous segmentation of the image to group the pixels located at the same distance.

This research project focuses on the use of multispectral and hyperspectral images in the visible and infrared range in a dehazing method based on a physical model.

Research Area

Information Science and Engineering (ENG)

Physics and Mathematics (PHY-MAT)

For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor Javier Hernández-Andrés (javierha@ugr.es@ugr.es):

• CV
• Letter of recommendation (optional)