Professor Rasmus Reinhold Paulsen from DTU receives half a million DKK from the JLI vision Foundation, which will be used to create a practice-oriented course about industrial machine vision.
Many of the vision engineers of tomorrow will come from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), and now Professor Rasmus Reinhold Paulsen wants to ensure that they are better prepared for the challenges they will face in their future workplaces.
With a grant of half a million DKK from the JLI vision Foundation, he will be able to create an updated version of an image analysis course for the Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science (DTU Compute).
“We have a large course in image analysis, which we have 500 students take every year, but we lack something that is close to the industry that JLI and similar vision companies work in,” says Rasmus Reinhold Paulsen.
“There can be a tendency for us at the university to maybe focus too much on AI research and too little on the craftsmanship. We need to get back to basics a bit. For example, how do you take images that are good enough for us to do effective machine learning? That's why I'd like to have a research assistant go work with JLI and other vision companies for a period of time, so we can create a knowledge transfer from the companies to the university,” he says.
Rasmus Reinhold Paulsen, professor at DTU, received the donation at JLI vision's 40th anniversary in June 2025.
Real-life data from vision companies
The goal is to develop a practice-oriented course based on cases and data from vision companies that will cover 3-4 of the 13 teaching sessions in the image analysis course.
“We could also have chosen to use the grant for a small research project in a niche area, but we do not believe that it will have the same impact as a course that can qualify future engineers to contribute even more to the companies they will be working for."
According to the plan, Rasmus Reinhold Paulsen will hire a research assistant who will spend some weeks this fall at JLI vision and other vision companies to collect data and cases to develop the course.
If everything goes as planned, the first students will be introduced to the new course in spring 2026, and Rasmus Reinhold Paulsen expects the course to be a hit among the students.
“Today, we have one class where we have vision companies visit us to talk about how they work, and the students are very interested in gaining insight into what is happening in the industry and how mathematics is applied in practice,” he says.
A foundation to support innovation
The JLI vision Foundation was founded in 2025 by Jørgen Læssøe, CEO and founder of JLI vision. The purpose of the foundation is to support research and development of vision technology and research in self-managing companies.
“At JLI vision, we have always gone after the tasks that others could not solve, so we can push the boundaries of what can be done with vision technology. Through the foundation, we now have a new opportunity to support projects that can renew the field and drive innovation,” explains Jørgen Læssøe.
