Q & A with Heesup Yun

Happy April! With field season imminent, we continue our series of team member spotlights by sitting down with Heesup Yun, one of the members of the sensing team and our resident drone architect.

Please introduce yourself: who are you, where are you from, and what is your educational/professional background?

HY: Hi, I'm Heesup Yun, and I'm originally from South Korea. I studied at Seoul National University, where I double majored in Biosystems Engineering and Aerospace Engineering. I then combined those interests for my master's, focusing on UAV remote sensing. After graduating, I worked at a startup developing driver-assistance systems. I was developing machine learning algorithms to detect vehicles, pedestrians, and even driver distractions using cameras. Now, I'm a Ph.D. student at UC Davis, focusing on computer vision and machine learning for agriculture. My research is on improving thermal image resolution using RGB images.

What is your role within GEMINI?
HY: Given my background in engineering and camera-related sensing, I'm helping out by building sensing drones and designing camera attachments for the rovers. I'm basically leading the charge when it comes to collecting sensing data for GEMINI – flying drones, driving rovers into the field, and then organizing all the image data we collect. On the research side, my goal is to use deep learning algorithms to improve the quality and throughput of low-cost sensors.

How did you end up working with GEMINI and what interests you most about this project?
HY: When I joined the Ph.D. program, I was interested in applying computer vision and machine learning to agriculture. Since the GEMINI project needed someone with both hardware and software skills in agricultural engineering, it was a perfect fit for my expertise and interests. I'm excited about the potential of data and AI-driven research to impact phenotyping and plant breeding and ultimately help solve the food security issue in Africa.

Is there anything particularly exciting you are working on now or in the near future that you would like to share?
HY: Currently, I'm working on generating plant architecture sequences from the image using LLMs, a novel approach to developing functional structural plant models for plant modeling. I'm wrapping up the experiment results and finalizing the draft writing to be submitted to a journal.

What do you like to do outside of work (personal hobbies and interests)?
HY: Outside of work, I enjoy listening to music and reading. I've also recently become interested in hiking and camping—there are so many beautiful places to explore in California and the US!