Alexandra Branzan Albu

Expertise profile

Dr. Alexandra Branzan Albu studies computer vision, a branch of artificial intelligence that deals with visual perception. She is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Victoria.

Dr. Branzan Albu puts theory to applied use in interdisciplinary collaborative projects, which address a variety of societal needs.

In the context of climage change, underwater environmental monitoring plays a crucial role in informing and enabling conservation efforts, governmental policies, and sustainable fisheries. Dr. Branzan Albu is currently collaborating with ASL Environmental Sciences on developing deep learning-based systems that can identify marine life and physical phenomena from acoustic backscatter time series, in an effort to build automatic tools for ecosystems assessment. An ongoing collaboration with Ocean Networks Canada, UVic's underwater ocean observatory network, focuses on developing algorithms that analyze hours of underwater video footage by extracting events of interest, like animal motion, and enhance visibility in low-light conditions. Research in collaboration with Cascadia Seaweed tackles the quantification of fish biodiversity from underwater videos.

Dr. Branzan Albu's graduate students also perform research in medical and document image analysis, involving industrial collaborators.

In the classroom, Dr. Branzan Albu emphasizes problem-based solving and experiential learning techniques with hands-on projects rather than tests. A primary goal of teaching is to convey essential knowledge to students and to offer them a solid foundation for future progress in their discipline. Dr. Branzan Albu’s belief is that teaching must go beyond this basic goal. She aims at teaching students how to apply concepts learned in class, make connections between apparently unrelated topics, investigate, think critically, as well as to identify interesting problems on their own and come up with creative ways to solve them. She is actively pursuing outreach activities dedicated to increasing women's presence in electrical and computer engineering.

To find out more about Dr. Branzan Albu's research and teaching, visit https://www.ece.uvic.ca/~aalbu.