Christoph Tholen

Christoph Tholen is a Professor at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), leading the Marine Perception unit. His work focuses on applying AI to maritime challenges, with expertise in remote sensing, environmental monitoring, and machine learning for aquatic systems.

Research Interests

• Development of AI-driven solutions for marine pollution detection
• Multi-platform/multi-sensor remote sensing integration
• Modeling photosynthetically active radiation in aquatic environments
• Location-independent neural network architectures
• Long-term monitoring of waterway pollutants
• Environmental data fusion techniques

Projects

• XAI4SFAS: Intelligent assistance systems for semi-autonomous ship navigation
• APLASTIC-Q-Canada: Machine Learning identification of pollutants in Canadian waterways
• PlasticObs_plus: Airborne multi-sensor monitoring for oceanic plastic detection
• MATE: Maritime traffic emissions monitoring network

Collaborations

Works with mariNom GmbH and Jade Hochschule Wilhelmshaven/Oldenburg/Elsfleth on aquatic imaging data, plastic pollution analysis, and maritime emissions research.