June 12, 2026

DeepSDM Day 2026

Sion, Switzerland

Species distribution modelling with deep learning

A full day dedicated to deep learning for species distribution modeling, with keynotes, short talks, and posters. Participation is free, but registration is required for organizational purposes.

Register now

Program

Tentative, will be updated

09:30-10:00

Break

Welcome and registration

10:00-10:45

Keynote

Keynote 1

Alexis Joly

10:45-11:15

Break

Coffee break

11:15-12:30

Talk

Short talks

  • Active Ecological Discovery: Decoupling Human Observation Bias from Metaweb Reconstruction via Vision-Language Retrieval (Sara Beery)
  • Language-aligning geospatial foundation model embeddings for explainable DeepSDMs (Thijs van der Plas)
  • SAGE: A Sampling-Aware Global Evaluation Benchmark for Species Distribution Modeling (Emilia Arens)

12:30-13:30

Break

Lunch

13:30-14:15

Keynote

Keynote 2

Laura Pollock

14:15-15:30

Talk

Short talks

  • Optimizing biodiversity conservation and ecosystem models with reinforcement learning (Daniele Silvestro)
  • BATIS: Bayesian Approaches for Targeted Improvement of Species Distribution Models (Catherine Villeneuve)
  • Explaining Species Distribution Models: A High-Resolution Landscape Dataset for Concept-Based XAI (Augustin de la Brosse)

15:30-17:00

Poster

Poster session with coffee break

17:00-

Break

Join us for a historical walk in Sion and dinner!

Keynote speakers

Laura Pollock

Laura Pollock

Associate Professor at McGill University

Alexis Joly

Alexis Joly

Research Director at Inria

Venue

Travel information

The Alpole building of EPFL Valais is located a few minutes away from the Sion train station. There are direct trains connecting Geneva and Lausanne to Sion, and only one connection is required from Zurich. Geneva and Zurich are the closest airports.

Partner hotels

Rooms are pre-booked at preferential prices in these hotels for the DeepSDM day. Please mention you are attending an event at EPFL in Sion when contacting them.

  • Hotel Elite : 15 minute walk to Alpole. Breakfast included. June 11th: single room for CHF 145. June 12th: single/double room for CHF 166/186.
  • Alaïa youth hostel : 5 minute walk to Alpole. No breakfast, but a common kitchen is available. Double room with/without private bathroom: CHF 70/95. Entire dormitory with 4 beds: CHF 120.
  • Moxy hotel : 30 minute walk or a short bus ride to Alpole. Breakfast included. Pre-booked rooms on June 11th: CHF 138 (single occupancy). No rooms available on June 12th.

Organizers

Team behind DeepSDM Day 2026