I'M

Rahul Raj.

Applying science for sustainability

Scientist and Teacher
Peace Explorer

'Simple Living High Thinking'

ABOUT ME

Dr Rahul Raj is currently a Principal research scientist at Pixxel, a hyperspectral satellite company. Rahul is working in the field of remote sensing, where he has gathered in-depth experience in low-altitude drone-based and high-altitude satellite-based earth observation. Rahul's research vision is to lead socially relevant and environment-friendly research programs. He believes that the projects related to the study of the atmosphere, earth's surface properties, and their interaction with electromagnetic radiation will ultimately push humanity towards sustainable growth. This can be achieved using advanced remote sensing techniques, evolving artificial intelligence methods, and process-based system modeling.

present and past associations

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Industrial and Academic Research Experience

Jul 2023 - Present

Principal Research Scientist at Pixxel.Space

Leading the satellite image correction team

Jul 2021 - June 2023

Research Scientist at Pixxel.Space

Apr 2020 - Jun 2021

Leading the research and development unit in the field of atmospheric correction, radiometric correction, and information extraction from hyperspectral data

Research Consultant at Pixxel.Space

Developed a large-scale atmospheric and radiometric correction model for satellite and airborne hyperspectral data (Provisional patent, USPTO number 63241096).

Jan 2020 - Aug 2020

Research assistant at SPARC Hub

Conducted thermal and hyperspectral data acquisition for asphalt pavement analysis and created hyperspectral reflectance spectral library for asphalt pavement under different levels of thermal stress

Nov 2019 - Apr 2020

Researcher in BOSCH-AgTech project

Designed hyperspectral image acquisition model and collected spectral and ground-truth data for development of a conceptual model (based on light reflectance properties) for the ripeness estimation of strawberries.

2017 - 2021

PhD research scholar at IITB-Monash Research Academy

2014-2016

Drone-based hyperspectral sensing for identification of at-risk nitrogen and water stress areas for better on-farm management

Master's by research student at IIT Bombay

Developed a mathematical model for Leaf Area Index calculation for citrus crop

2012 - 2013

Bachelor's final year project at PDDYPIET

Build an Arduino-based Bluetooth-controlled robot to climb on vertical walls and ceilings using the properties of Bernoulli's theorem.

Publications

Journal

Petropoulos, G.P., Detsikas, S.E., Lemesios, I. and Raj, R., 2024. Obtaining LULC distribution at 30-m resolution from Pixxel’s first technology demonstrator hyperspectral imagery. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 45(14), pp.4883-4896.

Journal

Raj, R.; Walker, J.P.; Jagarlapudi, A. Maize On-Farm Stressed Area Identification Using Airborne RGB Images Derived Leaf Area Index and Canopy Height. Agriculture 2023, 13, 1292.

Journal

Valluvan, A.B., Raj, R., Pingale, R. and Jagarlapudi, A., 2023. Canopy height estimation using drone-based RGB images. Smart Agricultural Technology, 4, p.100145.

Journal

Raj, R., Cosgun, A. and Kulić, D., 2022. Strawberry Water Content Estimation and Ripeness Classification Using Hyperspectral Sensing. Agronomy, 12(2), p.425

Journal

Raj, R., Walker, J.P., Pingale, R., Banoth, B.N. and Jagarlapudi, A., 2021. Leaf nitrogen content estimation using top-of-canopy airborne hyperspectral data. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 104, p.102584.

Journal

Raj R., Walker J., Vinod V., Pingale R., Naik B., Jagarlapudi A., 2021. Leaf water content estimation using top-of-canopy airborne hyperspectral images. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation.

Journal

Raj, R., Walker, J.P., Pingale, R., Nandan, R., Naik, B. and Jagarlapudi, A., 2021. Leaf area index estimation using top-of-canopy airborne RGB images. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 96, p.102282

Book chapter

Raj R., Kar S., Nandan R., Jagarlapudi A. (2020) Precision Agriculture and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). In: Avtar R., Watanabe T. (eds) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle: Applications in Agriculture and Environment. Springer, Cham.

Book chapter

Kar S., Nandan R., Raj R., Suradhaniwar S., Jagarlapudi A., "Improving data management and decision-making in precision agriculture." In Burleigh Dodds Science Publishing ID: 9781786767295, April 2020

Book chapter

Suradhaniwar S., Kar S., Nandan R., Raj R., and Jagarlapudi A. "Geo-ICDTs: Principles and Applications in Agriculture." In Geospatial Technologies in Land Resources Mapping, Monitoring and Management, pp. 75-99. Springer, Cham, 2018.

Conference

Spyridon E. Detsikas, George P. Petropoulos, Rahul Raj, 2023. "Leveraging PIXXEL's Hyperspectral Imagery for Land Use and Land Cover Mapping in an Agricultural Region of Northeast Australia", 42nd EARSeL Symposium 3-6 July 2023, Bucharest, Romania

Conference

Ambudkar, S., Raj, R., Billa, K. and Hukumchand, R., 2022, July. Super-Resolution for Cross-Sensor Optical Remote Sensing Images. In IGARSS 2022-2022 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (pp. 1880-1883). IEEE.

Conference

Vinod, V., Raj, R., Pingale, R. and Jagarlapudi, A., 2021. “Estimating Leaf Water Content using Remotely Sensed Hyperspectral Data.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.02250.

Conference

Raj R., Suradhaniwar S., Nandan R., Jagarlapudi A., Walker J. (2020) Drone-Based Sensing for Leaf Area Index Estimation of Citrus Canopy. In: Jain K., Khoshelham K., Zhu X., Tiwari A. (eds) Proceedings of UASG 2019. UASG 2019. Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, vol 51. Springer, Cham.

Patent

Raj, R. and Billa, K.K., 2023. Methods and systems for hyperspectral image correction. U.S. Patent Application 17/888,480

PhD Thesis

Drone-based sensing for identification of at-risk water and nitrogen stress areas for on-farm management

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EXPERIENCEO

Invited talk

Invited talks

Academic Teaching experience

Taken a half-semester course (Part of GNR631) at CSRE, IIT Bombay. Year: 2024, 2023 and 2022

Took a course on "AI and Ethics" at IIIT Sricity, Chittoor

Academic SUpervision experience

Mr Nicholas Lai (2022)
- UG final year project: Analysis of BRDF effect on the hyperspectral data
- Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia.
Ms Xiting Tan (2022)
- UG final year project: Mixed pixel analysis of the hyperspectral data
- Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia.
Ms Aprutha V and Mr Chandan Kumar (Joint project - 2022)
- PG industrial project: Remote Sensing image superresolution using GAN-based techniques
- IIIT Sricity, Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh, India.
Mr Rahul Waghmare (2020-2021)
- PG final year project: Hyperspectral data-based maize crop properties estimation (2021)
- CSRE, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India.
Mr Rohit Pingale (2020-2021)
- PG final year project: Early prediction of maize crop yield
- CSRE, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India.