FBI participation to ANERIS Project first annual meeting
France-BioImaging members Fabrice Cordelières, Perrine Paul-Gilloteaux and Caroline Thiriet attended ANERIS first Annual Meeting in Seville on November 26-27. During two days, the project’s partners shared updates on the progress of various tasks and activities within the consortium. The event showcased significant progress, fostered collaboration, and charted the way forward in advancing marine biodiversity monitoring technologies.
Day 1 began with a project overview from the project’s coordinator, highlighting key achievements and the project’s aim to tackle the rapid loss of ocean biodiversity by developing innovative tools and technology for monitoring, research and management of marine life.
Partners also presented updates on the 11 monitoring and life-sensing technologies and Perrine provided an in-depth overview on the latest developments in the AIES-MAC tool developed under the ANERIS project, which focuses on detecting and characterizing macro-organisms in underwater images. She highlighted the tool’s key features, improvements made since its initial development, and its ability to enhance the analysis of marine life captured in complex underwater environments.
The afternoon featured co-design sessions where teams defined Operational Marine Biology (OMB) products for the project’s four case studies and also worked on refining the draft infographics, combining input from across the consortium.
On Day 2, discussions shifted to cross-cutting topics such as infrastructure, training, communication, and exploitation. Ayoub El Ghadraoui, Euro-BioImaging Bio-Hub team member and ANERIS project task leader, presented a detailed overview of the training activities held in the frame of ANERIS WP3 Task 3.7, where FBI is involved. A first series of online workshops were held in 2023 with a focus on introducing the fundamentals of AI in image processing and the 2024 workshops focused on Underwater Imaging, Bio-optic, and Participatory Technologies. During the meeting, Ayoub also informed the partners that the ANERIS Workshop 2 was endorsed by the UN Ocean Decade, attesting to the relevance of this workshop for marine sciences.
The day concluded with work table sessions, where critical challenges were addressed, and consortium-wide priorities were established.
Marine Béraud • December 11, 2024