People
Team members
Rajendra is a professor and leads the Big Data and Emerging Technologies Research at the institute. His primary domain of activities is big data, artificial intelligent and semantic technologies with aim to combine strong theoretical results with high impact practical results. His research and teaching experience includes over 30 years in the Academia spanning different universities in Asia, Europe and North America. He has extensive experience in managing research and innovation projects funded by both industry and funding agencies, including the EU Framework Programs, UNESCO-TWAS and the Research Council of Norway. He is actively involved in several transnational ICT research and innovation initiatives for more than 25 years. He has authored/co-authored 16 books, around 148 research papers, edited 2 e-Books and edited 19 volumes of international conferences and workshops.
Malin Waage
Malin is a senior researcher at the Western Norway Research Institute. Malin has a Ph.D in Marine Geology and Geophysics from the University of Tromsø - The Arctic University of Norway. During the PhD and a following two-year post-doctor she was a part of CAGE – the Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate. Here, she developed and tested methods on using high-resolution seismic as a time-lapse tool for environmental monitoring and studied climate related variations of methane seepage in subseafloor sediments in the Arctic. Between her MSc and PhD she worked some years offshore in the company Baker Hughes, where she was responsible for well-monitoring, data collection and bottom hole sensors and equipment measuring rock properties during drilling operations. Throughout her career she gained a broad experience in collecting and processing various marine data. Data analysis, digitalization, technology development, climate and sustainability are of matters that interest her.
Bjørn Christian Weinbach
Bjørn Christian has been a PhD researcher at Western Norway Research Institute since August 2022. He holds a BE in Computer Science from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Gjøvik (2020) and an MS in Computer Technology from the University of Stavanger (2022). His area of interest is machine learning and computational statistics. His master's thesis focused on how machine learning models can be evaluated to uncover discrimination and injustice.
Dante Della Vella
Dante Della Vella has a Masters Degree in Cognitive Systems Engineering and a Bachelor's Degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from The Ohio State University. Dante worked as a research associate in the Cognitive Systems Engineering Lab (CSEL) while completing his masters degree. During this time he led and worked on multiple cutting edge Human-Machine teaming research projects. These studies focused on analyzing team architectures to identify patterns of challenge and ease in collaboration between people and automated agents. Dante's work aimed to make socio-technical systems of people and automated agents more resilient by bolstering their ability to adapt to changes in the world around them. Dante's masters thesis built off of this work and pivoted from investigating system resilience in industry to society. Dante's thesis focused on the generation of new technological capabilities to meet pressing societal needs. This was done through the creation and operation of a mobile covid testing pop-up station during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dante began working at the Western Norway Research Institute in May of 2023 to continue pursuing research into the resilience of communities themselves as layered socio-technical systems.
Former members
Minsung Hong (Postdoc / research associate)
Hoang Long Nguyen (senior researcher)
Visitors
Dr. Hemant Purohit ( George Mason University, USA)
Professor Song Guo (Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
Professor André Skupin (San Diego State University, USA)
Dr. Xuan Song (The University of Tokyo, Japan and Southern University of Science and Technology, China)
Visiting students
Yasas Senarath (George Mason University, USA)
Timothy Schempp (CICS, San Diego State University, USA)
Haoran Zhang (The University of Tokyo, Japan)
Alexander Schmidt (University of Hohenheim, Germany)
Irene Kilanioti (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany)
Joey Lau (Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong)
Xiaolan Jiang (National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan)
Andreas Iden (Master student at the University of Bergen)
Marius Alexander Pedersen (Master student at the University of Bergen)