Kelsey Doerksen

Kelsey Doerksen is a postdoctoral researcher in geospatial AI, holding a joint appointment with Arizona State University in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence and the University of Cape Town in the African Climate and Development Initiative's Climate Risk Lab. She completed her PhD at the University of Oxford in the Autonomous Intelligent Machines and Systems Doctoral program, where her research focused on applied AI tools for Earth Systems Science. Kelsey's research spans climate science, Earth Observation, humanitarian capacity building and machine learning, with collaborators including the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the European Space Agency, and UNICEF.

Prior to her PhD, Kelsey was a Space Systems Engineer at Planet, operating the world's largest Earth Observation satellite constellation. She holds an MESc in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Western Ontario and a BEng in Aerospace Engineering from Carleton University. Beyond her research, Kelsey is committed to advancing equity in STEM and ethical AI development. She served as President of Oxford's Womxn in Computer Science Society, was an Equity, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Fellow in Oxford's Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division, and in 2025, she was selected for the Portraits of Keble III for her outstanding contributions to research and the broader world.