About me
I am a PhD candidate at EPFL, Switzerland, supervised by Devis Tuia. My research focuses on applying recent machine learning methods to ecology and conservation. In particular, I study how deep learning can support large-scale biodiversity monitoring by improving species distribution models. As part of this work, I developed MaskSDM and co-developed CISO, two new deep learning frameworks for species distribution modeling. Recently, I proposed MIAM, a novel approach for handling modality imbalance and missing inputs in multimodal ecological applications. More broadly, while I remain critical of certain applications of AI, I am enthusiastic about the role it can play in monitoring the Earth and helping preserve its ecological diversity. In this regard, I am one of the organizers of the AI+Environment Summit, a full-day event designed to inspire, ignite, and innovate work in AI for the environment.
Before starting my PhD, I completed a Master’s degree in Data Science and a Bachelor’s degree in Communication Systems at EPFL. During my studies, I worked with several research groups, including the Data Science Lab (DLAB) of Robert West on analyzing food consumption at EPFL and the Machine Learning and Optimization Lab (MLO) of Martin Jaggi on text-to-image generation. I also worked with the INDY Lab of Patrick Thiran, where I co-built the first version of Climpact, which led to a publication. In addition, I interned at Sony in Stuttgart, working on neural architecture search. Alongside my research activities, I supervised several Master’s students and served as an assistant for multiple courses (see Teachings).
News
- Feb 2026 — Our new masking strategy for multimodal ecological applications, called MIAM, has been accepted at ICLR 2026 🎉. Very proud of this work, which is a central contribution of my PhD. See you in Brazil 🪇🇧🇷
- Feb 2026 — Our seasonal SDM approach with deep learning has been accepted for publication in Global Change Biology 🎊
- Feb 2026 — I presented my work and career path as an AI engineer to high school students at both the Forum Formation in Sierre and the Forum Horizon at UNIL in Lausanne 🇨🇭
- Jan 2026 — CISO has been published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution 🥳 I also presented this new approach for conditioning SDMs on incomplete observations at the TIBS conference in Aarhus 🇩🇰
- Nov 2025 — Our MaskSDM paper has been published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution 🎉
- Oct 2025 — I co-organized the AI+Environment Summit in Zürich 🌿
Selected publications
Contact me
Feel free to reach out to me at robin.zbinden[at]epfl.ch, or come say hi at conferences. I’m always happy to discuss research ideas, potential collaborations, or anything related to machine learning and ecology — and I also enjoy chatting about sports, literature, films, music, or politics.