New recruitment
Aly Kounta strengthens the SAGID+ team with his valuable skills in geomatics.
Welcome to Aly Kounta, who is joining the SAGID+ team as a research engineer on Monday, September 2nd. Aly’s main responsibility will be the management of geographic data, a key issue for the research project and roadside maintenance in general.
Here is his introduction:
“I come from an initial education in Animal Biology (specializing in Ecology) at UCAD (Dakar, Senegal). During this program, I worked on agroecological issues, particularly on the services provided by crop auxiliaries and the topping of cotton plants for their natural defense against pests (e.g., Helicoverpa armigera). These agroecological methods encourage the use of fewer chemicals in farming operations. This work was carried out at the Biopass/IRD laboratory (Biology of Sudan-Sahelian African Populations) of the Institute of Research for Development.
Later, I discovered the world of geomatics in Morocco after a two-year training in GIS and Remote Sensing, where I worked on issues related to agrometeorological drought. This was followed by my first professional experience at a consulting firm specializing in forestry and land use planning, where I gained some field expertise and project management skills in the forestry sector. After nearly two years of experience, I decided to complete the SILAT (Localized Information Systems for Land Use Planning) program at AgroParisTech (Montpellier, France), specializing in geomatics project management. I completed an internship at Terres Inovia (Grignon-Thiverval), where I classified sunflower plots based on their planting quality using a time series of Sentinel-2 satellite images.
The SILAT program, coupled with my professional internship, has allowed me to gain more experience in land use planning projects and technical skills in geomatics. I am now very enthusiastic about joining the ERPI (Innovative Process Research Team) at the University of Lorraine, where I am tasked with setting up a cartographic database to highlight the importance of roadside dependencies in France. This work is part of a collaborative research effort involving various actors and structures to optimize roadside maintenance interventions.”
