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Hi! I am Carlos

Carlos Collado Capell

M.Sc. Student in Computational Science at EPFL

Hey! I’m Carlos—a data scientist passionate about Foundation Models and multi-modal AI. I’m currently pursuing my master’s at EPFL, having explored some very cool projects at places like ESA, UC Berkeley, and Georgia Tech. I love tackling meaningful challenges in computer vision, NLP, remote sensing, and sustainability, and right now I’m actively looking for thesis opportunities or exciting projects to dive into—let’s connect!

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Projects

LLM-powered Education Assistant
LLM-powered Education Assistant
LLM-powered Education Assistant
April 2025 - Present

Building an assistant to answer students’ questions using ChatGPT-distilled preference data, RAG and DPO.

Sensor-Agnostic Foundation Model Compression for Onboard AI
Sensor-Agnostic Foundation Model Compression for Onboard AI
Sensor-Agnostic Foundation Model Compression for Onboard AI
Feb. 2025 - Present

Techniques to reduce model size and compute load (e.g., EfficientViT, DynamicViT, NViT) of ViTs for EO.

HateVATC: Multi-Modal Hate Speech Detection in Videos
HateVATC: Multi-Modal Hate Speech Detection in Videos
HateVATC: Multi-Modal Hate Speech Detection in Videos
March 2024 - Present

Combined video (ViT), audio (MFCC), and text (BERT) modalities via cross-modal attention. Because of its potential, expanded into a conference publication since May 2024 (report under “Details” is from May 2024).

ΦsatNet: A Deployable AI Foundation Model for Onboard Processing on Φsat-2
ΦsatNet: A Deployable AI Foundation Model for Onboard Processing on Φsat-2
ΦsatNet: A Deployable AI Foundation Model for Onboard Processing on Φsat-2
Sept. 2024 - Present

Main project during my time at ESA. Φsat-2 dataset creation, pretraining, and benchmarking.

This website!
This website!
This website!
March 2025 - Present

Created my portfolio using HTML, CSS, and JS with an Hugo theme.

Multi-Agent Bayesian Optimization in Building Temperature Control
Multi-Agent Bayesian Optimization in Building Temperature Control
Multi-Agent Bayesian Optimization in Building Temperature Control
Feb. 2024 - July 2024

Implemented and parallelized a multi-agent bayesian optimization algorithm. Collaborated until October to publish results (currently under review).

Coin Detection Challenge
Coin Detection Challenge
Coin Detection Challenge
March 2024 - June 2024

Using OpenCV for circle-based segmentation, transfer learning (with a basic AlexNet), we achieved a 0.9740 public score, 4th best in competition.

Advanced Data Visualization: VineMap
Advanced Data Visualization: VineMap
Advanced Data Visualization: VineMap
March 2024 - June 2024

Used tools like HTML, CSS, D3.js, and weather APIs to create interactive visualizations (map, treemap, area chart, bar chart animation, scatterplot) and storytelling components.

Catch the Bias! Learning AI Fairness
Catch the Bias! Learning AI Fairness
Catch the Bias! Learning AI Fairness
Oct. 2023 - May 2024

We designed a non-linear cooperative game on AI ethics using Twine (no-code tool), featuring 6 scenarios ranging from facial recognition and university admissions to biased word embeddings.

RCNNs for coronal jets identification
RCNNs for coronal jets identification
RCNNs for coronal jets identification
Oct. 2023 - Jan. 2024

Built an RCNN to detect solar coronal jets in image sequences, using SunPy to retrieve citizen science–labeled data. In collaboration with ESA researcher.

Analysis of Wikispeedia: A Game on Finding Paths in Wikipedia
Analysis of Wikispeedia: A Game on Finding Paths in Wikipedia
Analysis of Wikispeedia: A Game on Finding Paths in Wikipedia
Sept. 2023 - Dec. 2023

Created human-like agents for the Wikispeedia game using HuggingFace Transformers, NetworkX for graph analysis, and Plotly/Seaborn for visualizations.

GoogleOurMaps: A Social-Based Map Search Engine
GoogleOurMaps: A Social-Based Map Search Engine
GoogleOurMaps: A Social-Based Map Search Engine
Aug. 2022 - Dec. 2023

Developed a social-based map search engine prototype (Figma), integrating Agile practices and strategic business planning, collaborating with experts at GoogleMaps and TripAdvisor.

Technology Consultant: Optimizing Energy and Plastic Consumption
Technology Consultant: Optimizing Energy and Plastic Consumption
Technology Consultant: Optimizing Energy and Plastic Consumption
Jan. 2023 - May. 2023

Optimized energy consumption on production lines of Sidel (TetraPak), resulting in $47,000 in annual cost savings.

Performance modeling and cost optimization of a solar desalination system
Performance modeling and cost optimization of a solar desalination system
Performance modeling and cost optimization of a solar desalination system
Jan. 2022 - May. 2024

Optimized cost and energy use to competitive market levels via Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). First-author publication in journal Renewable Energy (IF 9.0).

Skills

Experience

1
European Space Agency (ESA)

Sep 2024 - Feb 2025

Frascati, Italy

At ESRIN, ESA’s Centre for Earth Observation, specifically at Φ-lab’s Explore Office, the research unit focused on AI.

Machine Learning Research Intern

Sep 2024 - Feb 2025

Responsibilities:
  • Pretrained a Foundation Model for onboard AI (Φsat-2) via multi-task learning with multi-node DDP.
  • Created 800+ GB datasets to pretrain and benchmark model against SOTA models (Prithvi, SatMAE, SeCo).
  • Developed a novel Sentinel-2 preprocessing technique that accelerates model training.
  • Created a database to compare training policies, architectures, and datasets of Foundation Models for EO.
  • First author on an upcoming paper, working with experts in onboard AI, Foundation Models, and dataset creation.
  • Accepted (with funding) to present my work at the ESA-NASA International Workshop on AI Foundation Models for EO.
  • Ongoing collaboration to publish a journal paper.

Peninsula Clean Energy

June 2023 - Sept 2023

Redwood City (Silicon Valley), Caliornia, USA

Pioneering community-led electricity provider delivering affordable, renewable energy in San Mateo County (Silicon Valley) and beyond.

Data Science Intern

June 2023 - Sept 2023

Responsibilities:
  • Improved by 10% the long-term forecast of the electricity demand in Silicon Valley.
  • Designed a ML model that identified key trends in load divergence of up to 15%.
2

3
Tecnicas Reunidas

May 2022 - July 2022

Madrid, Spain

Global leader in engineering and construction, specializing in energy and industrial projects. Worked in the energy transition division.

Engineering Intern

May 2022 - July 2022

Responsibilities:
  • Benchmarked green hydrogen technology technical and economic specifications.
  • Led a study on the success rate of energy transition projects.

Research

1
EPFL - ECEO Laboratory

Feb. 2025 - Present

Sion, Switzerland

Directed by Professor Devis Tuia, the Environmental Computational Science and Earth Observation Laboratory (ECEO) focuses on applying artificial intelligence to Earth observation data.

Sensor-Agnostic Foundation Model Compression for Onboard AI

Feb. 2025 - Present

Responsibilities:
  • Compressing ViT-based Foundation Models via pruning and knowledge distillation (DynamicViT, NViT).
  • Pretraining a ViT-Tiny backbone from scratch to benchmark against compressed ViT-Base and ViT-Large.
  • Semester Project at EPFL. 12-16 hours per week.

IDIAP

March 2024 - Present

Martigny, Switzerland (Remote)

Directed by Professor Andrea Cavallaro, the institute focuses on fundamental research in AI (e.g., original development of Torch, advancements in speech recognition).

HateVATC: Multi-Modal Hate Speech Detection in Videos

March 2024 - Present

Responsibilities:
  • Developed a multi-modal deep learning model that outperformed the benchmark on detecting hate speech in video content, integrating cross-modal attention (CMA) across text (BERT), audio (MFCC), and image (ViT) embeddings.
  • Explored feature extractors for multi-modal data: Whisper, wav2vec, BERT, RoBERTa, ViT, CLIP.
  • Started as a class project at EPFL. Because of its potential, expanded into a conference publication since May 2024. 5-8 hours per week.
  • Submitted as conference paper in April 2025. Awaiting review.
2

3
EPFL - Predictive Control Lab

Feb. 2024 - July 2024

Lausanne, Switzerland

Directed by Professor Colin Jones, the lab focuses on data-driven optimization and predictive control methods for large-scale and fast dynamical systems.

Distributed Multi-Agent Bayesian Optimization in Building Temperature Control

Feb. 2024 - July 2024

Responsibilities:
  • Optimized a multi-agent building cluster system using our lab-developed DMABO algorithm and Bayesian learning to adjust temperature control settings to minimize daily peak energy consumption.
  • Enabled multi-node optimization of the algorithm (MPI), and implemented in Python via GPy, Scipy, Pandas.
  • Main work done as a semester project at EPFL. 12-16 hours per week. Worked for around 50 hours after that to finalize the paper submission.
  • Submitted to a journal in January 2025. Awaiting review.

Georgia Tech - WERL

Jan. 2022 - May 2022

Madrid, Spain

Directed by Professor Akanksha Menon, the Water–Energy Research Lab (WERL) applies thermal science and functional materials to develop sustainable energy and water technologies.

Performance modeling and cost optimization of a solar desalination system

Jan. 2022 - May 2022

Responsibilities:
  • Designed and simulated the electrical and thermal behavior of a solar-thermal desalination system.
  • Optimized cost and energy use to competitive market levels via Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO).
  • This project was my bachelor thesis (Grade: 10/10). 18-20 hours per week until May 2022.
  • Continued the work afterward ~5 hours per week to finalize technical work and prepare a journal publication. Final submission in June 2024.
  • Paper published at Renewable Energy Journal (IF 9.0): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2024.120866.
4

Education

M.Sc. in Computational Science and Engineering (120 ECTS)
CGPA: 5.43 out of 6.00
Taken Courses:
  • Modern Natural Language Processing
  • Applied Data Analysis
  • Deep Learning
  • Image Processing II
  • Parallel and high-performance computing
  • Computational Linear Algebra
  • Others: Data Visualization, Machine Learning, Parallelism and concurrency in software, Image analysis and pattern recognition, Numerical analysis and computational mathematics
Research Projects:
  • Multi-Agent Constrained Bayesian Optimization (submitted to journal paper, Under Review)
  • HateVATC: Multi-Modal Hate Speech Detection in Videos (to be submitted in the next month)
  • Sensor-Agnostic Foundation Model Compression for Onboard AI
Awards:
B.Sc. in Industrial Technologies Engineering (240 ECTS)
CGPA: 9.32 out of 10.00 (Valedictorian: #1/159)
Awards:
Exchange Scholarship during B.Sc. (60 ECTS)
CGPA: 3.85 out of 4.00
Extracurricular Activities:
Exchange Scholarship during B.Sc. (60 ECTS)
CGPA: 4.00 out of 4.00
Extracurricular Activities: