Remote Sensing Research Assistant: 3D Forest Analytics

National Technician Development Centre; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 32,000 - 42,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

41 Days holiday

Cycle to work scheme

On-site nursery

On-site gym

Enhanced leave pay

Staff Support Service

Discounted medical insurance

Job summary

University College London (UCL) Geography is seeking a Research Assistant for the Scanning Together project. The role involves running the processing chain from raw scans to published data, including pre-processing with HDMapping SLAM and applying algorithms to extract tree-level measurements and semantic segmentation of forests in 3D.

The appointment is fixed-term with funding until 31 March 2027, starting 1 October 2026, with hybrid working and London-based duties.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree (or equivalent experience) in remote sensing, geomatics forestry, environmental science, computer science or a closely related discipline.
• Practical experience of working with 3D point-cloud data from laser scanning or photogrammetry, including inspection, filtering and quality assessment.
• Working knowledge of forest structure measurement and basic forest inventory concepts, such as diameter at breast height, tree height, crown dimensions and plot- based sampling.

Responsibilities

• Pre-process incoming data using the open-source HDMapping SLAM software.
• Apply and compare processing algorithms to extract individual tree parameters and to perform semantic and instance segmentation of the point clouds.
• Publish processed data through the 3Dtree.earth platform or as interactive Potree viewers for partners and the wider community.

Skills

Remote sensing

3D point-cloud data

Photogrammetry

Education

Master’s degree in a related field

Tools

HDMapping SLAM

Potree

Job description

University College London (UCL) Geography is seeking a Research Assistant for the Scanning Together project. The role involves running the processing chain from raw scans to published data, including pre-processing with HDMapping SLAM and applying algorithms to extract tree-level measurements and semantic segmentation of forests in 3D.

The appointment is fixed-term with funding until 31 March 2027, starting 1 October 2026, with hybrid working and London-based duties.