Elizabeth Vargas

Senior Machine Learning Engineer

About Me

I am currently a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Leap AI. Previously, I worked at Ouster as a Software Engineer and at ORCA Hub as a Research Associate. I obtained my PhD in Signal Processing from Heriot-Watt University and my Master’s degree in Computer Vision and Robotics via an Erasmus Mundus Master Programme called VIBOT, awarded by the University of Burgundy (France), University of Girona (Spain) and Heriot-Watt University (United Kingdom). I received my Bachelor’s degree in computer science from Universidad del Valle (Colombia), during which I participated in an academic exchange with the Friedrich–Alexander University Erlangen–Nürnberg (Germany). I have also spent time as a research intern at Toshiba Medical Visualization Systems and Philips Research Aachen, and participated in an Innovation Think Tank organised by Siemens Healthcare.

Email / LinkedIn / Google Scholar / Github / CV

News

  • Jan. 2023:
I joined Leap AI as a Senior Machine Learning Engineer, using computer vision to streamline product packing.
  • Oct. 2021:
Following the acquisition of Sense Photonics, I joined Ouster in building lidar for the automotive industry.
  • Jul. 2021:
Our paper Underwater Inspection and Intervention Dataset is now available to download as a preprint.
  • Feb. 2021:
Our paper Robust Underwater Visual SLAM Fusing Acoustic Sensing was accepted to ICRA 2021 in Xi’an, China.
  • Dec. 2020:
Our paper On Improved Training of CNN for Acoustic Source Localisation has been accepted to TASLP.
  • Dec. 2020:
I joined Sense Photonics as a Software Engineer, building intelligent 3D vision systems at low-cost.
  • Feb. 2020:
I am co-organising the WiCV workshop to be held in conjunction with ECCV 2020 in Glasgow, United Kingdom.
  • Nov. 2019:
I defended my PhD thesis, Acoustic Source Localisation in Constrained Environments. Examiners: Abderrahim Halimi (Heriot-Watt University) and Keith Holland (University of Southampton). Slides can be found here.
  • Oct. 2019:
I participated in the third ORCA Hub demonstrations in Blyth, Northumberland. Press release can be found here.
  • Jan. 2019:
I joined the ORCA Hub as a Research Associate, and as member of the Perception and RObotics (PRO) group.

Publications

Journals Conferences
  • E. Vargas, R. Scona, J. Scharff Wilners, T. Luczynski, Y. Cao, S. Wang, Y. Petillot, Robust Underwater Visual SLAM Fusing Acoustic Sensing, in International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Xi’an, China, June 2021. [pdf] [bib] [video]

  • E. Vargas, J. R. Hopgood, K. Brown, K. Subr, A Compressed Encoding Scheme for Approximate TDOA Estimation, in European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO), Rome, Italy, September 2018. [pdf] [bib] [slides]

  • E. Vargas, K. Brown, K. Subr, Impact of Microphone Array Configurations on Acoustic Source Localization, in International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Calgary, Canada, April 2018. [pdf] [bib] [slides]

  • C. Bustos, E. Vargas, M. Trujillo, Classifying Estimated Stereo Correspondences based on Delaunay Triangulation, in IberoAmerican Congress on Pattern Recognition (CIARP), Lima, Peru, November 2016. [pdf] [bib]

  • E. Vargas, M. Trujillo, A Corresponding Points Classification Approach by Delaunay Triangulation, in Latin American Conference on Networked and Electronic Media (LACNEM), Santiago, Chile, October 2012. [pdf] [bib]

Preprints Theses
  • E. Vargas, Acoustic Source Localisation in Constrained Environments, PhD Thesis, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, February 2020. [pdf] [bib] [slides]

  • E. Vargas, Texture Enhanced Tissue Analysis, MSc Thesis, Erasmus Mundus Masters in Vision and Robotics, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, June 2015. [pdf] [bib] [slides]

  • E. Vargas, Classifying Estimated Corresponding Points by Delaunay Triangulation, BSc Thesis, Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia, June 2012. [pdf] [bib] [slides]