He defended his PhD in Germany on a Tuesday. On Wednesday, he moved to Denmark

Dominik Weikert completed his computer science PhD in Germany on a Tuesday and moved to Denmark the following day. Drawn by the reputation of the Nordics as modern and digital, he experienced this firsthand when his residency registration was handled quickly and mostly digitally, unlike the paperwork-heavy process in Germany.

Weikert is now a postdoc at Aalborg University and a DIREC researcher involved in PERSIST, a project focused on developing autonomous drone operations for critical energy infrastructure. Partnering with universities, energy providers, and tech companies, the project aims to automate manual and time-consuming power plant inspections using drones.

Because real-world drone flights face heavy regulation, Weikert built a simulation environment using a game engine. This setup generates training data for the project's computer vision work and allows operators to interact with the drones using natural language commands. Instead of manually piloting or programming the devices, a user can simply speak a command like inspecting a specific building, and the system creates a plan while maintaining security checks and predefined missions.

Weikert plans to stay in Denmark and continue working in the rapidly advancing fields of artificial intelligence and robotics.