Dr. Nathan Jacobs, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, MO.
Research and Innovation
Taylor Geospatial Engine is pleased to showcase Dr. Nathan Jabobs as a seed grant awardee in the Innovation Bridge’s first project. Jacobs is the Director of the Multimodal Vision Research Laboratory (MVRL) and a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis.
His research centers on developing learning-based algorithms and systems for extracting information from large-scale image collections. He has applied this expertise to many application domains, with a particular focus on geospatial, environmental, and medical applications.
Taylor Geospatial selected Dr. Jacobs as a grant awardee due to his dedication and expertise as a researcher and educator, and, as a strong voice in the evolution of the Taylor Geospatial Institute and Washington University’s Geospatial Research Initiative. His track record of successful technical advancements and collaborations across institutions makes him an invaluable member of the Field Boundaries for Agriculture initiative core team.
Innovation Pioneer
Dr. Jacobs’ lab, the Multimodal Vision Research Laboratory (MVRL), specializes in development of learning-based algorithms that process vast amounts of image data from multiple sources. Jacobs has made significant contributions to the analysis of geospatial and temporal data, focusing on extracting meaningful insights from location-based information. He has worked on problems that involve time-lapse data and environmental monitoring, often leveraging machine learning models to process this data. Jacobs has explored the use of satellite imagery for various applications, such as land-use classification, environmental monitoring, and urban planning. His research integrates multi-modal data sources, including remote sensing data, to enhance the understanding of geospatial environments.
Proven Track Record
Dr. Jacobs is a frequent author, mentor, and contributor to academic publications and research collaborations. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and Google, among others.
Commitment to Impactful Solutions
Due to the intersectional nature of his research, Dr. Jacobs’ work is applicable across a number of domains, with a particular focus on real-world applications with broad societal benefits. One of his notable contributions is BirdSAT, a tool developed by his team at Washington University in St. Louis. BirdSAT uses advanced machine learning techniques to classify bird species and map their global distribution by combining ground-level bird imagery with satellite data. This innovation has the potential to revolutionize conservation efforts by helping ecologists track and protect endangered species, while also offering a scalable solution for other ecological monitoring tasks.
Additionally, his work applied to medical imaging and social media data mining reflects his broad commitment to developing solutions to generate insights into human health, activities and environmental patterns.
Dr. Jacobs and TGE’s Innovation Bridge
Dr. Jacobs and his team at the MVRL were selected as a recipient of a grant from the Taylor Geospatial Engine under the Innovation Bridge program to help build a global-scale field boundary dataset, train baseline models for field boundary detection, and construct a publicly accessible evaluation benchmark. Jacobs’ team is assisting the project in data collection, data preprocessing, baseline model development, baseline model training, baseline model evaluation, packaging the data and model for sharing, and benchmark construction.
For TGE’s first Innovation Bridge project, we set out to engage a team of experts who were interested in the application of AI to the problem of identifying field boundaries from satellite imagery. On top of that expertise, we sought out a group of people who think big and have an entrepreneurial mindset within their individual domain. Dr. Jacobs is an embodiment of this profile and has been an enthusiastic contributor. In his words, “This has been a fun and exciting collaboration! TGE pulled together a group of world-class researchers, standard developers, tool builders, community creators, and domain experts to address the long-standing need for high-quality, global-scale agricultural field boundaries. There’s much work left to be done, but we have made important strides in a relatively short time.”
Learn More About Dr. Nathan Jacobs
As part of Dr Jacobs’ passion for knowledge transfer and collaborative research he has extensively published and shared his work. We encourage you to explore his background and published works on the Washington University in St Louis McKelvey School of Engineering website.
– Watch Dr Nathan Jacobs’ presentation Toward Dynamic Multimodal Remote Sensing: From Buildings to Soundscapes.
– Explore recently released software libraries from MVRL focused on satellite image synthesis, active image geolocalization, and image timestamp verification.
– Explore Dr Jacobs’ full body of published academic papers and scholarship on Google Scholar.
– Collaborate with Dr Jacobs’ and his Washington University in St team as part of the TGE Innovation Bridge program by attending the bi-weekly community call or join the Google Group.