By Susanne Togeby, AAU Communication and Public Affairs
Photo: Private

In her PhD project, Neelu Madan from the Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology has researched the combination of artificial intelligence and surveillance in close collaboration with the company Milestone Systems. She developed a model that can teach artificial intelligence to distinguish between normal and abnormal behaviour and over time become smarter and smarter. The nomination as ‘Årets Ildsjæl’ is based on this research. The young researcher says:

"I am very happy and grateful to have been nominated for this award. I am also quite overwhelmed, as I never imagined this would happen.”

Research that can save human lives

Neelu Madan's research has great applications and can be used, for example, in ports to avoid drowning accidents, because the artificial brain can use its experience of normal behaviour to assess if an accident occurs. The same applies to all other situations where accidents can occur, e.g. in nursing homes or hospitals.

Manufacturing companies can use the technology to detect if the automated processes in production are not going as they should. There is also great potential for CT and MRI scans, because artificial intelligence can, for example, learn to detect a tumor in the brain that the doctor would not be able to notice because humans cannot review such large amounts of data.

A Little Step Towards Greener Online Shopping

Neelu Madan is still researching anomaly detection. Today, her research focuses on object segmentation in online advertisements. Her work aims to develop algorithms that accurately identify and segment key objects, such as clothing items, within advertisements. This segmentation is crucial for ensuring that the colours of these objects are captured and reproduced as accurately as possible on screens. This is particularly relevant in online shopping, where many people return their orders because the colour of the clothes does not match what they saw on the screen.

By solving this problem with colours, Neelu Madan and her colleagues aim to reduce transport costs for return shipments and take a small step towards a cleaner environment by reducing CO2 emissions and reducing the need for packaging materials.

More information

Neelu Madan's research has previously earned her the Spar Nord Foundation Research Award

The winner of the Aalborg Awards will be revealed on Friday 6 September 2024. Read more about the Aalborg Awards 2024 

Read more about Neelu Madan's research on her AAU Profile: