Hello, I'm

Edoardo
Pessina

Geoinformatics Engineer & AI Researcher

Turning satellite data, deep learning, and a love for the night sky
into meaningful insights about our planet — and beyond.

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Geospatial intelligence,
built from first principles.

I'm a Master's student in Geoinformatics Engineering at Politecnico di Milano (expected Dec 2026), with a background in Environmental Engineering. My work sits at the intersection of Earth Observation, Deep Learning, and Big Data — using satellite imagery and neural networks to understand how our planet is changing.

I serve as Vice-President of the association managing the Ca' del Monte Astronomical Observatory, where I've also worked as a science communicator since 2018 — bringing the complexity of space down to Earth for general audiences.

27/30 GPA — M.Sc.
8+ Years at Ca' del Monte
5 Major ML projects

Education

M.Sc. Geoinformatics Engineering
Politecnico di Milano
2024 – Expected Dec 2026
  • Advanced Deep Learning
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Uncertainty in AI
  • Systems for Big Data
  • Earth Observation Advanced
B.Sc. Environmental Engineering
Politecnico di Milano
Completed Mar 2025

Thesis

Deep Learning framework for storm surge global prediction — exploring neural architectures that model ocean dynamics at planetary scale.

Technical expertise

A full-stack toolkit for geospatial AI — from raw satellite bands to production-ready models.

Languages

Python C R MATLAB

Machine Learning & AI

PyTorch Scikit-learn TensorBoard TIMM Albumentations

Data & Systems

SQL MongoDB Cassandra Neo4J Elasticsearch Redis Flask Dash

Geospatial & Remote Sensing

Google Earth Engine QGIS SNAP GDAL CAMS Rasterio

Selected work

End-to-end ML pipelines applied to real-world geospatial and scientific challenges.

01
CNN Random Forest MLP GEE

Rutor Glacier Temporal Classification

Built an automated Google Earth Engine pipeline extracting 1,178 ten-band spectral signatures from 40 years of Landsat imagery to track glacier dynamics. Compared 1D-CNN, MLP, and Random Forest architectures on severely imbalanced geospatial data.

  • 99.1% classification accuracy
  • ~50% glacier volume loss quantified
  • −1.05 km²/yr measured retreat rate
02
PyTorch LSTM TensorBoard Kaggle

Human Activity Recognition with RNNs

Designed a Bidirectional LSTM (2-layer, 156 units) for multi-class sequence classification using skeletal joints and clinical data. Applied rigorous user-based splitting and L1/L2 regularization to prevent data leakage.

  • 91.4% F1-score achieved
  • Bi-LSTM 2-layer, 156 units
03
PyTorch TIMM Albumentations Kaggle

Ensemble Deep Learning for Image Classification

Architected a robust vision ensemble combining EfficientNetV2, ConvNeXt, and ResNet152 for an 8-class image classification challenge. Tackled class imbalance through Focal Loss, Mixup/CutMix augmentation, and Test-Time Augmentation.

  • 53.4% accuracy on 8-class task
  • 3-model ensemble architecture
04
PyTorch Vision Transformer HLS Fine-tuning

Fine-Tuning Geospatial Foundation Models

Fine-tuned the 300M-parameter Prithvi Vision Transformer (and Terramind) for a 10-class land cover segmentation task using only 100 training samples. Dynamically adapted RGB embeddings to process 7-band multispectral satellite chips.

  • 300M parameter model
  • 100 training samples only
  • 40% accuracy — low-data regime

Where science
meets art.

Before I wrote my first line of Python, I was already staring at the sky. I serve as Vice-President of the association running the Ca' del Monte Astronomical Observatory, guiding visitors through the cosmos one eyepiece at a time.

Astrophotography is the practice of patience — long exposures, stacking frames, teasing signal from noise. Sound familiar? The same intuition I apply to satellite imagery processing started here, under dark skies, chasing photons from objects millions of light-years away.

It's also a constant reminder of why Earth Observation matters: seen from orbit, our planet is a fragile, luminous pale blue dot — worth understanding, worth protecting.

Vice-President
Deep-sky imaging
Space missions
Ca' del Monte Observatory Vice-President, Ca' del Monte Observatory

Let's connect.

Always open to research collaborations, internship opportunities, or just a good conversation about space, AI, or our planet.

Italian — Native · English — Fluent