Stephen Petrie

Stephen Petrie is an Earth Observation Research Fellow at Swinburne University of Technology's Space Technology and Industry Institute, leading the Remote Sensing Program's Earth Observation stream. He holds a PhD in infectious disease modelling from the University of Melbourne, with prior degrees in theoretical cosmology (MPhil) and a BSc (Hons) in physics. His research spans interdisciplinary fields including satellite Earth Observation, machine learning, neural networks, and mathematical biology. He has extensive experience in high performance computing and cloud infrastructure (AWS, Nectar).

His work integrates artificial intelligence with environmental and biomedical applications, such as developing novel text-image hybrid classifiers for entity disambiguation and advancing assistive vision technologies using self-attention networks. Current projects include carbon accounting via satellite fusion systems and methane plume detection using neural networks. Petrie has secured multiple grants totaling over AUD 10M, including ARC-funded research on automated horizon scanning and industry collaborations for water leak detection.

• Key Projects: Satellite hardware optimization frameworks, AI-driven agricultural carbon monitoring
• Teaching: Supervised 4 HDR students in machine learning, remote sensing, and interdisciplinary research team dynamics
• Labs/Teams: Remote Sensing Program leader within Swinburne's Space Institute