Student Member Spotlight: Marion Dugué

Written by: Kevin Corbley

Originally from Versailles, France, Marion Dugué is working on her PhD at ETH Zürich (Federal Institute of Technology) in Switzerland in the chair of Earth observation and Remote Sensing. Her current research focuses on extracting soil moisture values from microwave satellite data, primarily from the ESA Sentinel-1 SAR satellite. Prior to ETH Zürich, Marion earned her Master’s Degree in Applied Geophysics with the IDEA League program and a joint-Bachelor’s in Mathematics and Physics at Warwick University in the U.K. When she isn’t working on her research, Marion enjoys running and hanging out in the mountains of Switzerland. She joined GRSS in late 2024 and attended the 2025 IADF Summer School in Benevento, Italy.

Why did you join GRSS?

For me, it is a great way to meet and exchange with remote sensing scientists at any stage in their career. It’s also useful to keep up to date on what is happening more at a global level. I think it’s very easy to know what your peers in the same university or country are doing, but it’s a harder to know what’s happening in another country or continent. GRSS provides an easier way to stay scientifically informed.

In terms of your academic pursuits, how do you expect GRSS will benefit you?

Related to the last question, it is about knowing what are the state-of-the-art algorithms that could be related to my PhD focus. But I think also the softer skills of research that are needed like networking and knowing how to use our scientific insights in a way that could be explainable for a wider audience. GRSS, or any scientific community of that scale, offers a very good opportunity to share, discuss and learn from one another.

In addition to the 2025 Summer School, what other GRSS activities have you taken advantage of so far, and what do you hope to participate in in the future?

I want to take advantage to the Women Mentoring Women program. I’ve signed up and I’m waiting on being paired. Just learning through other women how to navigate the academic world would be very valuable. I am also a member of the GEO AI4EO Enabler, where IEEE GRSS is a participating organisation. The different working groups there discuss on a regular basis a wide range of topics relating the use of Artifical Intelligence in Earth Observation, from a governance stand point to training initiatives. In the future, I’d like to further my involvment with this group specifically in organising workshops to make the latest AI for EO research available to the broader remote sensing community.

After you complete your PhD program, how do you expect GRSS will benefit you in your professional career, whether you stay in academia or maybe go into the industry?

I anticipate it will mostly contribute by providing a community of other scientists. I’m hoping that through my PhD and attending various GRSS events, I can build collaborations that I will be able to deepen once I graduate. Whether with other academic institutions or companies, I’m just generally keen to meet and discuss with people that I wouldn’t necessarily be paired with in a traditional PhD.

So far, how is your experience with GRSS differed in any way from what you expected it to be either good or bad?

I would say my most direct experience with GRSS differed from my expectations, but in a positive way! My only experience so far is with the IADF summer school where I was surprised by how supportive the instructors and the organizers were. I thought it was very stimulating to hear about the most novel technologies that are out there. [GRSS] also provided a lot of very generous grants for traveling or for the best poster awards. So, I was very pleasantly surprised by the amount of support and enthusiasm they showed for us students.

Tell us more about Summer School 2025?

It was four days, which seems very short, but it was intense. We covered remote sensing topics ranging from the creation of super-resolution images to quantum ML. There was ample time for meeting fellow students during the coffee breaks and dinners and enjoyable activities organized on the outside of the summer school like a historical tour of the city of Benevento, Italy. I recommend it to any student using ML for remote sensing!

In terms of upcoming GRSS events, where can the readers of this article expect to meet you in the coming months and year?

I am eager to attend the remote sensing conferences (co-)organized by GRSS, specifically IGARSS as I’ve heard many good things about it. I am trying to stay in the loop also on the workshops that GRSS is proposing.

What words of encouragement would you offer to students who are considering GRSS but have not quite decided to join yet?

I think there’s only a net positive in joining the community. There’s plenty of opportunities that are advertised – like the conferences, the grants, the workshops, or also this Women Mentoring Women program, if you fit in that category. There are also opportunities that you wouldn’t necessarily hear about if you’re not part of GRSS. It accelerates your academic research and as a student, the (basically) free resources are really to take advantage of!

Feel free to contact with Marion on LinkedIn at: www.linkedin.com/in/mariondugue/

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