Lightweight CNN and Causal GNN for scene understanding

Thesis topic details

General information

Organisation

The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) is a key player in research, development and innovation in four main areas :
• defence and security,
• nuclear energy (fission and fusion),
• technological research for industry,
• fundamental research in the physical sciences and life sciences.

Drawing on its widely acknowledged expertise, and thanks to its 16000 technicians, engineers, researchers and staff, the CEA actively participates in collaborative projects with a large number of academic and industrial partners.

The CEA is established in ten centers spread throughout France
  

Reference

SL-DRT-26-0573  

Direction

DRT

Thesis topic details

Category

Technological challenges

Thesis topics

Lightweight CNN and Causal GNN for scene understanding

Contract

Thèse

Job description

Scene understanding is a major challenge in computer vision, with recent approaches dominated by transformers (ViT, LLM, MLLM), which offer high performance but at a significant computational cost. This thesis proposes an innovative alternative combining lightweight convolutional neural networks (Lightweight CNN) and causal graph neural networks (Causal GNN) for efficient spatio-temporal analysis while optimizing computational resources. Lightweight CNNs enable high-performance extraction of visual features, while causal GNNs model dynamic relationships between objects in a scene graph, addressing challenges in object detection and relationship prediction in complex environments. Unlike current transformer-based models, this approach aims to reduce computational complexity while maintaining competitive accuracy, with potential applications in embedded vision and real-time systems.

University / doctoral school

Sciences et Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (STIC)
Nice-Sophia-Antipolis

Thesis topic location

Site

Grenoble

Requester

Position start date

01/09/2026

Person to be contacted by the applicant

MESQUIDA Thomas thomas.mesquida@cea.fr
CEA
DRT/DSCIN/LSTA

Tutor / Responsible thesis director

MARTINET Jean jean.martinet@univ-cotedazur.fr
Université Côte d'Azur
I3S (Laboratoire d'Informatique, Signaux et Systèmes de Sophia Antipolis (UMR CNRS 7271)
Laboratoire I3S, Les Algorithmes - Bat Euclide B, 2000, Route des Lucioles
06900 Sophia Antipolis – France

04.89.15.43.86

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