Stian Normann Anfinsen is a Senior Researcher in NORCE's Earth Observation Group in Tromsø. His field of work is machine learning applied to images and time series from satellite remote sensing. His endeavours include the development of avalanche prediction systems and offshore wind information products by combined use of earth observation images, physical modelling and artificial intelligence. He is an expert on statistical modelling and analysis of images from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensore.
Stian received the cand.mag. (B.Sc.), cand.scient (M.Sc.). og Ph.D. degrees in physics from UiT The Arctic University of Norway in 1997, 2000 and 2010, respectively. Han received an M.Sc. in Communications, Control and Digital Signal Processing from the University of Strathclyde i Glasgow, UK, in 1998.
He has worked as a software engineer at Kongsberg Spacetec, Tromsø, from 2001 to 2005. He then moved to UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Department of Physics and Techology (DPT), where he was a Ph.D. student (2005-2010) and postdoctoral research fellow (2010-2014). He became an associate professor in the Earth Observation Group in 2014, served as Head of the Department at DPT in 2016/17, and was one of the founders of the Machine Learning Group in 2017, where he became a Professor in 2022. In 2021 he resigned as leader of the UiT Machine Learning Group in 2021. Since then his main affiliation has been with NORCE.
His research interests include image analysis, graph theory and time series analysis using machine learning and statistical methods for applications in remote sensing and energy analytics.