A member of the first cohort of Waterloo Engineering's Rising Stars Fellowship — a paid summer research program for undergraduates — is one of seven fellows who've returned to the University of Waterloo for graduate study since the program began in 2024.
David Carciente is now pursuing a master's degree in the Department of Systems Design Engineering, after spending his 2024 Rising Stars summer in Waterloo's Vision and Image Processing Lab building a computer vision tool that helps marine researchers identify whales in satellite imagery.
Carciente, who completed his undergraduate degree in software engineering at Concordia University, says getting to know his supervisors — Dr. David Clausi and Dr. Linlin Xu — during the fellowship made Waterloo feel like familiar ground by graduation. Now co-supervised by Clausi and Xu, he's building a data pipeline that pairs satellite imagery with sea ice charts, laying the groundwork for a model that could help predict sea ice conditions.
Go to Charting a path back to Waterloo for the full story on Carciente's journey, and the Rising Stars Fellowship website for more on the program.
David Carciente (bottom left) with his fellow Rising Stars and Ukrainian summer program co-hort, at Niagara Falls.