Mason Professor Receives Prestigious FDL Award

Dr. Anamaria Berea was awarded an FDL (Frontier Development Lab) Award of Merit, which acknowledges outstanding  contribution in the field of artificial intelligence for space exploration and humanity.  FDL partners with NASA and SETI Institute in “artificial intelligence research for space science, exploration and all humankind.”

Dr. Berea, associate professor in the Computational and Data Sciences in the College of Science, received the award for her work as a super mentor and affiliate for the Frontier Development Lab, where the research team she led developed a reverse search engine for unlabeled images from Earth Observation data. Additionally, she worked with another team on using natural language processing to transform and analyze time series data from Kepler instrument to characterize star luminosity.

FDL is a new mode of research: a year-long cycle focused on an 8-week research sprint. The central value is that subject experts - with deep knowledge of the problem domain, can develop AI enhanced work-flows and solutions with peers from the data sciences. The format’s emphasis on rapid iteration and prototyping ensures a high success rate.