Dr Victoria Hann - University of Nottingham

UK IC Postdoctoral Research Fellowships 2026

The challenge

A crucial part of child sexual exploitation and abuse material (CSEAM) investigations is identifying where abuse imagery has been captured. Geolocation, or identifying where particular media was captured from the image data, is a growing research field, however current methods work best for outdoor scenes where GPS metadata is present or identifiable features or architecture such as street signs, buildings or vegetation are visible. Indoor scenes are far harder to geolocate due to the limitations of fewer visible geo-anchored objects, high variability in interior layouts and furnishings, and limited availability of useful data of indoor scenes. 

The research

Dr Victoria Hann is developing methods to ‘fingerprint’ indoor scenes, generating a unique identifier that can link different pieces of CSEAM imagery back to the same physical location, even when taken from different viewpoints or angles. Using computer vision approaches, the location of a scene can be estimated, and images of scenes with similar geographical features can be linked to map out a wider ecosystem of CSEAM offences. A synthetic data pipeline will be used to generate large volumes of artificial room images with features matched to known regions, training models at a scale and diversity that could not be achieved using real-world data alone and without ever requiring exposure to real CSEAM.

The researcher

Dr Hann is a computer vision researcher based in the Computer Vision Lab at the University of Nottingham. Her PhD applied novel synthetic data techniques to improve 3D image segmentation of filamentous biological structures in micro-CT scans, with a broader focus on the interdisciplinary applications of computer vision. Alongside this technical work, she has a strong interest in the responsible use of AI, which motivated this project's focus on anti-exploitation AI. She is also an active advocate for women in computer science and regularly takes part in outreach work supporting underrepresented groups in the field.

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