Institution profile

National Observatory of Athens

Academic institutioneurope · gr
Official website
Research library3linked papers
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Selected work

Representative Papers

Distilling Vision Transformers for Distortion-Robust Representation Learning

Apr 24, 2026

This work addresses the challenge of learning distortion-robust visual representations in the absence of clean image data. The authors propose a novel asymmetric knowledge distillation framework that leverages a pre-trained Vision Transformer as a teacher model processing clean images and a student model handling distorted inputs. Through a multi-level alignment mechanism—encompassing global embeddings, patch-level features, and attention maps—the student is guided to approximate the representation space of the teacher. This approach uniquely integrates asymmetric distillation with hierarchical feature alignment, enabling high-quality representation learning using only distorted images. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the method significantly outperforms existing techniques across multiple distortion types and datasets on image classification tasks, achieving superior performance under equivalent human supervision.

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Monitoring digestate application on agricultural crops using Sentinel-2 Satellite imagery

Apr 28, 2025

This study addresses environmental risks associated with agricultural application of digestate—including soil health degradation, microplastic contamination, and nitrogen leaching—by proposing a dynamic monitoring framework integrating Sentinel-2 time-series remote sensing and machine learning. We systematically construct the first crop-specific spectral response dataset (encompassing EOMI, NDVI, and EVI) following digestate application across four major crops: wheat, maize, sunflower, and sugar beet. A hybrid remote sensing–machine learning detection architecture is developed, incorporating Random Forest, k-Nearest Neighbors, Gradient Boosting, and Feedforward Neural Networks. Applied at scale in Thessaly, Greece, the method enables large-area, low-cost, and near-real-time identification of digestate presence, achieving a maximum F1-score of 0.85. This approach overcomes the spatial limitations and high operational costs of conventional field-based monitoring, establishing a novel paradigm for precision organic fertilizer management and intelligent environmental risk control.

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Recent publications

Latest Papers

Distilling Vision Transformers for Distortion-Robust Representation Learning

Apr 24, 2026

This work addresses the challenge of learning distortion-robust visual representations in the absence of clean image data. The authors propose a novel asymmetric knowledge distillation framework that leverages a pre-trained Vision Transformer as a teacher model processing clean images and a student model handling distorted inputs. Through a multi-level alignment mechanism—encompassing global embeddings, patch-level features, and attention maps—the student is guided to approximate the representation space of the teacher. This approach uniquely integrates asymmetric distillation with hierarchical feature alignment, enabling high-quality representation learning using only distorted images. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the method significantly outperforms existing techniques across multiple distortion types and datasets on image classification tasks, achieving superior performance under equivalent human supervision.

0 citationsRead paper

Monitoring digestate application on agricultural crops using Sentinel-2 Satellite imagery

Apr 28, 2025

This study addresses environmental risks associated with agricultural application of digestate—including soil health degradation, microplastic contamination, and nitrogen leaching—by proposing a dynamic monitoring framework integrating Sentinel-2 time-series remote sensing and machine learning. We systematically construct the first crop-specific spectral response dataset (encompassing EOMI, NDVI, and EVI) following digestate application across four major crops: wheat, maize, sunflower, and sugar beet. A hybrid remote sensing–machine learning detection architecture is developed, incorporating Random Forest, k-Nearest Neighbors, Gradient Boosting, and Feedforward Neural Networks. Applied at scale in Thessaly, Greece, the method enables large-area, low-cost, and near-real-time identification of digestate presence, achieving a maximum F1-score of 0.85. This approach overcomes the spatial limitations and high operational costs of conventional field-based monitoring, establishing a novel paradigm for precision organic fertilizer management and intelligent environmental risk control.

0 citationsRead paper