On 21 October 2026, the University of Science and Technology of Hanoi (USTH) will host the seminar “Impacts of Blue Economy Development and Pathways towards Sustainable Coastal Socio-Ecosystem”. Featuring Dr. Claudia Restrepo-Ortiz from the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) and Dr. Jean-Christophe Auguet from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the seminar will introduce research using artificial intelligence and marine microbial ecology to investigate how blue economy activities affect the environment and health.
Applying Artificial Intelligence to Marine Biodiversity Research
In her presentation, “Artificial Intelligence for Marine Biodiversity and Coastal Socio-Ecosystems”, Dr. Claudia Restrepo-Ortiz, Scientific Computing Engineer at IRD, will explain how deep learning can extract ecological information from marine monitoring data.
Her research includes detecting and classifying fish in underwater videos, identifying individual sperm whales from photographs of their flukes, and classifying fish sounds in underwater recordings. Using high-resolution satellite imagery, these methods can also detect artisanal fishing boats to help estimate fishing effort.
In this seminar, Dr. Restrepo-Ortiz plans to combine satellite imagery with deep learning to map aquaculture farms and fishing boats along the Vietnamese coast, tracking changes in their distribution over space and time. The resulting data will provide indicators of blue economy activities that can be analysed alongside environmental, ecological and health data. She will also introduce plans to develop open, reusable AI tools and support training in data science and artificial intelligence for USTH students and lecturers.
Investigating Marine Microorganisms through a One Health Approach
Complementing the monitoring of activities at sea, Dr. Jean-Christophe Auguet’s presentation, “From Blue Economy to One Health: Marine Microbial Ecology in a Changing World”, will examine changes at the microbial scale.
A Research Scientist in Microbial Ecology at CNRS, Dr. Auguet will trace the development of his research on aquatic microbial communities, including more recent work on microorganisms associated with disease and antibiotic resistance genes.
His proposed research at USTH will focus on how global change and blue economy activities, particularly aquaculture, influence microbial community dynamics. Through a One Health approach, the programme will investigate the emergence and circulation of potential pathogens and antibiotic resistance genes in relation to environmental conditions and health.
Collaboration with USTH researchers and international partners is expected to help lay the foundations for a long-term observatory of Vietnamese coastal socio-ecosystems.
Seminar Information
Time: 10:00 – 11:30 AM, Wednesday, 21 October 2026
Venue: Room 402, Building A21, University of Science and Technology of Hanoi (USTH)
Address: 18 Hoang Quoc Viet, Nghia Do, Hanoi
USTH warmly invites interested lecturers, researchers and students to attend the seminar, learn about these research directions and explore opportunities for future collaboration.
For scholars and other interested participants who are unable to attend in person are welcome to join the seminar online via Zoom:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82324683019?pwd=RphcVGeMgCy06YUlaOutM7Aayra3QF.1
Meeting ID: 823 2468 3019
Passcode: 449025
