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About Petra
Associate Professor Petra Helmholz serves as a Senior Lecturer in Photogrammetry within Spatial Sciences at Curtin University’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering. She earned a German Dipl.-Ing. degree, equivalent to an M.Sc., and a Dr.-Ing., equivalent to a Ph.D., both in Geomatics. Helmholz commenced her research career in 2006 as a scientific and research assistant at the Institute of Photogrammetry and GeoInformation, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany, and the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her early work centered on digital photogrammetry, remote sensing, and image analysis. Joining Curtin University in 2012 as an academic staff member, she has progressed to Associate Professor, engaging in teaching and research activities.
Her research specializations include underwater photogrammetry, terrestrial and airborne photogrammetry, and applications of these techniques in health diagnostics such as 3D facial analysis for rare diseases, agriculture, cultural heritage mapping, engineering, urban heat island studies, and mobile LiDAR for heritage documentation. Key publications encompass “Pilbara rock art: laser scanning, photogrammetry and 3D photographic reconstruction as heritage management tools” (Heritage Science, 2017), “Investigation of Chromatic Aberration and Its Influence on the Processing of Underwater Imagery” (Remote Sensing, 2020), “Modelling extreme wide-angle lens cameras” (The Photogrammetric Record, 2021), “Downscaling of Urban Land Surface Temperatures Using Geospatial Machine Learning with Landsat 8/9 and Sentinel-2 Imagery” (Remote Sensing, 2025), and “Utility of 3D Facial Analysis As A Biomarker In Rare Diseases Exploration with Hereditary Angioedema” (2026). Helmholz has received the 2018 Asia Pacific Spatial Excellence Award for Education Development (individual award) and the 2017 Western Australia Spatial Excellence Award for Education Development. She contributed to the 2024 Curtinnovation Award-winning team in Science and Engineering for spacecraft technology advancements. Her scholarship is evidenced by over 1,000 citations and an h-index of 42.
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