David Clausi | PhD PEng SM-IEEE FAAIA FCAE FEIC

David Clausi is a Professor at the University of Waterloo in the Department of Systems Design Engineering as well as the past Associate Dean - Research and External Partnerships in the Faculty of Engineering.

His research interests lie in computer vision, image processing, and pattern recognition. Professor Clausi is a multidisciplinary researcher, publishing refereed journal and conference papers in the diverse fields including remote sensing, computer vision, video sports analytics and algorithm design. His research work has led to successful commercial implementations including the creation and selling of a spinout company (CREZ).

As of result of his teaching and research work, Professor Clausi has received multiple awards including the “Research Excellence and Service to the Research Community” award from the Canadian Image Processing and Pattern Recognition Society (CIPPRS). He has also received numerous Outstanding Performance Awards and Distinguished Performance Awards as well as two teaching awards at two different institutions.

• Computer Vision, Remote Sensing Systems, Video Sports Analytics, Sea Ice Monitoring, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Digital Image Processing, Pattern Recognition, Satellite Imagery, Signal Processing

• 1996, Doctorate Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, Ontario

• 1992, Master's Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, Ontario

• 1990, Bachelor's Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, Ontario

• 2024-2031 University Research Chair

• 2024 Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada

• 2022 Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering

• 2022 Fellow of Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association

• Most cited paper for the Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing

• Stanford University International Career "Top 2% List"

• University Outstanding Performance Award (5x)

• 2012 Engineering Research Excellence Award

• Engineering Distinguished Performance Award (3x)

• 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award, Canadian Image Processing and Pattern Recognition Society (CIPPRS)

• 2010 Mind to Market Award, Ontario Centers of Excellence

• 2005 Teaching Excellence Award, Faculty of Engineering

• 2019 - 2024 Associate Dean - Research and External Partnerships, Faculty of Engineering

• 2009 - 2012 Associate Chair - Graduate, Systems Design Engineering

• PEng - Professional Engineer Ontario

• FCAE - Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering

• FAAIA - Fellow of the Asia-Pacific AI Association

• FEIC - Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada

• SYDE 121 - Digital Computation
  • Taught in 2020, 2025
• SYDE 575 - Image Processing
  • Taught in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024

* Only courses taught in the past 5 years are displayed.

• Chen X., Patel M., Xu L., Chen Y., Scott K.A., and Clausi D.A., A Weakly Supervised Learning Approach for Sea Ice Stage of Development Classification from AI4Arctic Sea Ice Challenge Dataset, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 2025.

• Turnes J.N., Jiang M., Taleghanidoozdoozan S., Xu L., and Clausi D.A., ITT: Long-Range Spatial Dependencies for Sea Ice Semantic Segmentation, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, Volume 18, 13296-13309, Canada, 2025.

• Chen X., Patel M., Xu L., Chen Y., Scott K.A., and Clausi D.A., Weakly Supervised Learning for Pixel-Level Sea Ice Concentration Extraction Using AI4Arctic Sea Ice Challenge Dataset, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, Volume 21, 1-5, Canada, 2024.

• Bright J., Balaji B., Chen Y., Clausi D.A., and Zelek J.S., PitcherNet: Powering the Moneyball Evolution in Baseball Video Analytics, IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops, 3420-3429, Canada, 2024.

• Chen X., Patel M., Xu L., Chen Y., Clausi D.A., Andrea Scott K., and Huang W., Pixel-Level Sea Ice Concentration Retrieval from Sentinel-1 SAR Imagery and Ancillary Data via Regional Loss Representations, Oceans Conference Record IEEE, China, 2024.

• Chen X., Patel M., Xu L., Scott K.A., Clausi D.A., and Huang W., Enhancing Sea Ice Type Classification from AI4Arctic Dataset Based On Regional Loss Representations, International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium IGARSS, 178-182, China, 2024.

• Chomko V., Chen Y., Clausi D.A., and Wong A., Synthetic Local Data Augmentation, 2024 IEEE 26th International Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing Mmsp 2024, Canada, 2024.

• Balaji B., Bright J., Chen Y., Rambhatla S., Zelek J.S., and Clausi D.A., Seeing Beyond the Crop: Using Language Priors for Out-of-Bounding Box Keypoint Prediction, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, Volume 37, Canada, 2024.

• Vats K., Walters P., Fani M., Clausi D.A., and Zelek J.S., Player tracking and identification in ice hockey, Expert Systems with Applications, Volume 127, Canada, 2023.

• Chen X., Scott K.A., Xu L., Jiang M., Fang Y., and Clausi D.A., Uncertainty-Incorporated Ice and Open Water Detection on Dual-Polarized SAR Sea Ice Imagery, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Volume 61, Canada, 2023.

• Chen X., Scott K.A., Jiang M., Fang Y., Xu L., and Clausi D.A., Sea ice classification with dual-polarized SAR imagery: a hierarchical pipeline, Proceedings 2023 IEEE Cvf Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision Workshops Wacvw 2023, 224-232, Canada, 2023.

• Wu Y., Xu L., Wang L., Chen Q., Chen Y., and Clausi D.A., Multi-Task Edge Detection for Building Vectorization From Aerial Images, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, Volume 20, Canada, 2023.

• Ghanbari M., Xu L., and Clausi D.A., Local and Global Spatial Information for Land Cover Semisupervised Classification of Complex Polarimetric SAR Data, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, Volume 16, 3892-3904, Canada, 2023.

• Taleghanidoozdoozan S., Xu L., and Clausi D.A., Region-Based Sea Ice Mapping Using Compact Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery with Learned Features and Contextual In, Remote Sensing, Volume 15, Canada, 2023.

• Fang Y., Wang Y., Xu L., Chen Y., Wong A., and Clausi D.A., Unsupervised Bayesian Subpixel Mapping Autoencoder Network for Hyperspectral Images, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Volume 61, Canada, 2023.

• Chen X., Scott K.A., and Clausi D.A., Uncertainty Analysis of Sea Ice and Open Water Classification on SAR Imagery Using a Bayesian CNN, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), Volume 127, 343-356, Canada, 2023.

• Chen X., Valencia R., Soleymani A., Xu L., and Scott K.A., Calibration of Uncertainty in Sea Ice Concentration Retrieval With an Auxiliary Prediction Interval Estimator, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, Volume 20, Canada, 2023.

• Patel M., Chen X., Xu L., Pena Cantu F.J., Noa Turnes J., Brubacher N.C., Clausi D.A., and Scott K.A., The Influence of Input Image Scale on Deep Learning-Based Beluga Whale Detection from Aerial Remote Sensing Imagery, International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium IGARSS, Volume 127, 5732-5734, Canada, 2023.

• Chen X., Valencia R., Soleymani A., Scott K.A., Jiang M., Xu L., and Clausi D.A., Uncertainty-Incorporated Arctic Sea Ice Concentration Estimation Using Heteroscedastic Bayesian Neural Networks, International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium IGARSS, Volume 127, 141-144, Canada, 2023.

• Xu L., Fang Y., Chen X., and Clausi D.A., Light-Weighted Explainable Dual Transformer Network for Hyperspectral Image Classification, International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium IGARSS, Volume 127, 5942-5945, Canada, 2023.

• Chen X., Patel M., Cantu F.J.P., Park J., Turnes J.N., Jiang M., Xu L., Scott K.A., Clausi D.A., and Huang W., The Influence of Input Variable Selection on Deep Learning-Based Sea Ice Parameter Inversion from Multi-Sensor Satellite Data, Oceans Conference Record (IEEE), Canada, 2023.

• Pena Cantu F.J., Chen X., Liu Y., Kanani K., Park J., Tunes J.N., Xu L., Scott K.A., and Clausi D.A., A Hierarchical Multitask U-Net for Automated Sea Ice Mapping from AI4Arctic Sea Ice Challenge Dataset, Oceans Conference Record IEEE, Canada, 2023.

• Fang Y., De Souza A., Xu L., Chen X., and Clausi D.A., Endmember Variable Mineral Mapping with Bayesian Convolutional Unmixing Network Using Prisma Hyperspectral Imagery, Workshop on Hyperspectral Image and Signal Processing Evolution in Remote Sensing, Canada, 2023.

• Fang Y., Wang Y., Xu L., Zhuo R., Wong A., and Clausi D.A., BCUN: Bayesian Fully Convolutional Neural Network for Hyperspectral Spectral Unmixing, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Volume 60, Canada, 2022.

• Wu Y., Xu L., Chen Y., Wong A., and Clausi D.A., TAL: Topography-Aware Multi-Resolution Fusion Learning for Enhanced Building Footprint Extraction, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, Volume 19, Canada, 2022.

• Taleghanidoozdoozan S., Xu L., and Clausi D.A., Oil Spill Candidate Detection Using a Conditional Random Field Model on Simulated Compact Polarimetric Imagery, Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing, Volume 48, 425-440, Canada, 2022.

• Fang Y., Xu L., Wong A., and Clausi D.A., Multi-Temporal Landsat-8 Images for Retrieval and Broad Scale Mapping of Soil Copper Concentration Using Empirical Models, Remote Sensing, Volume 14, Canada, 2022.

• Fang Y., Xu L., Chen Y., Zhou W., Wong A., and Clausi D.A., A Bayesian Deep Image Prior Downscaling Approach for High-Resolution Soil Moisture Estimation, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, Volume 15, 4571-4582, Canada, 2022.

• Jiang M., Xu L., and Clausi D.A., Sea Ice–Water Classification of RADARSAT-2 Imagery Based on Residual Neural Networks (ResNet) with Regional Pooling, Remote Sensing, Volume 14, Canada, 2022.

• Radhakrishnan K., Scott K.A., and Clausi D.A., Sea Ice Concentration Estimation: Using Passive Microwave and SAR Data with a U-Net and Curriculum Learning, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, Volume 14, 5339-5351, Canada, 2021.

• Lee P.Q., Radhakrishnan K., Clausi D.A., Scott K.A., Xu L., and Marcoux M., Beluga whale detection in the Cumberland Sound Bay using convolutional neural networks, Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing, Volume 47, 276-294, Canada, 2021.

• Asadi N., Scott K.A., Komarov A.S., Buehner M., and Clausi D.A., Evaluation of a Neural Network with Uncertainty for Detection of Ice and Water in SAR Imagery, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Volume 59, 247-259, Canada, 2021.

• Chen Y., Xu L., Fang Y., Peng J., Yang W., Wong A., and Clausi D.A., Unsupervised Bayesian Subpixel Mapping of Hyperspectral Imagery Based on Band-Weighted Discrete Spectral Mixture Model and Marko, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, Volume 18, 162-166, China, 2021.

• Ghanbari M., Clausi D.A., and Xu L., CP-IRGS: A Region-Based Segmentation of Multilook Complex Compact Polarimetric SAR Data, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, Volume 14, 6559-6571, Canada, 2021.

• Lee P.Q., Xu L., and Clausi D.A., Estimating Noise Floor in Sentinel-1 Images With Linear Programming and Least Squares, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Volume 60, Canada, 2022.

• Vats K., Fani M., Clausi D.A., and Zelek J., Puck localization and multi-task event recognition in broadcast hockey videos, IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops, 4562-4570, Canada, 2021.

• Vats K., Fani M., Clausi D.A., and Zelek J., Multi-task learning for jersey number recognition in ice hockey, Mmsports 2021 Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Multimedia Content Analysis in Sports Co Located with ACM mm 2021, 11-15, Canada, 2021.

• Gebotys B., Wong A., and Clausi D., POOF: Efficient Goalie Pose Annotation using Optical Flow, International Conference on Sport Sciences Research and Technology Support Icsports Proceedings, Volume 127, 116-122, Canada, 2021.

• Lee P.Q., Xu L., and Clausi D.A., Sentinel-1 additive noise removal from cross-polarization extra-wide TOPSAR with dynamic least-squares, Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume 127, Canada, 2020.

• Ghanbari M., Clausi D.A., Xu L., and Jiang M., Unsupervised Segmentation of Multilook Compact Polarimetric Sar Data based on Complex Wishart Distribution, International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium IGARSS, 1456-1459, Canada, 2020.

• Lee P.Q., Xu L., and Clausi D.A., Recalibrating Sentinel-1 Additive Noise-Gain with Linear Programming, International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium IGARSS, 6158-6161, Canada, 2020.

• Yang L., Xu L., Peng J., Song Y., Wong A., and Clausi D.A., Nonlocal Band-Weighted Iterative Spectral Mixture Model for Hyperspectral Imagery Denoising, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Volume 58, 5588-5601, China, 2020.

• Zhong Z., Li J., Clausi D.A., and Wong A., Generative Adversarial Networks and Conditional Random Fields for Hyperspectral Image Classification, IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, Volume 50, 3318-3329, Canada, 2020.

• Vats K., Fani M., Walters P., Clausi D.A., and Zelek J., Event detection in coarsely annotated sports videos via parallel multi receptive field 1D convolutions, IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops, Volume 127, 3856-3865, Canada, 2020.

• Hoekstra M., Jiang M., Clausi D.A., and Duguay C., Lake ice-water classification of RADARSAT-2 images by integrating IRGS Segmentation with pixel-based random forest labeling, Remote Sensing, Volume 12, Canada, 2020.

• Resilience and research in motion
• How sports technology is accelerating improvements in player scouting
• Combining Indigenous knowledge and deep learning to support safer on-ice travel
• University Research Chair announced
• Can AI help save beluga whales?
• DarwinAI’s Journey: How a Little-Known Waterloo Startup Caught Apple’s Eye
• Using AI to Track Professional Hockey Players (Tech Briefs) - March 26, 2024
• University of Waterloo using AI to analyze hockey decisions on the ice - March 14, 2024
• Going Top Shelf with AI to Better Track Hockey Data - March 11, 2024
• Team tops international event to map sea ice using AI - April 28, 2023
• Profs use AI to track hockey games better
• "Honoured for their outstanding contributions" Canadian Academy of Engineering
• "SYDE faculty among world’s top scientists in 2021"
• “Waterloo researchers introduce new hockey statistics tracking systems”
• “Group wins award at hockey analytics conference”
• “Artificial intelligence helps with earlier detection of skin cancer”
• “Research collaboration between Christie and University of Waterloo made new M Series possible”
• “Breakthrough blood flow imaging research showcased no Daily Plant TV show”
• “Police using facial recognition software to help ID G20 suspects”
• “A multi-task learning network to recognize the numbers on jerseys of sports team players”
• “Projecting into the future”