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Nathan Jacobs

Dr. Nathan Jacobs is a Professor in the Computer Science & Engineering department at Washington University in St. Louis and Director of the Multimodal Vision Research Laboratory. His research focuses on computer vision, specializing in learning-based algorithms for processing large-scale image collections. His current work develops techniques for understanding the visual world from geotagged imagery, including images from social networks, outdoor webcams, and satellites. His research has been funded by NSF, NIH, DARPA, IARPA, NGA, ARL, AFRL, and Google.

He has graduated 14 PhD students, with 6 placed in tenure-track faculty positions and others at leading technology companies including Microsoft, Zillow, and Kitware. He has also mentored numerous MS students and undergraduates, many of whom have gone on to pursue advanced degrees or careers in industry.

Roles and Affiliations

Selected Achievements

  • National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 2016
  • Google Faculty Research Awards, 2016 and 2018
  • Dean's Award for Excellence in Research, University of Kentucky, 2018
  • Best Paper Award, EarthVision Workshop at CVPR 2024

Selected Contributions

See my lab's page for a complete listing of publications.

  1. Sarkar A, Sastry S, Pirinen A, Jacobs N, Vorobeychik Y. 2026. DiffVAS: Diffusion-Guided Visual Active Search in Partially Observable Environments. In: International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS).
    bibtex
  2. a thumbnail for VectorSynth: Fine-Grained Satellite Image Synthesis with Structured Semantics
    Cher D, Wei B, Sastry S, Jacobs N. 2026. VectorSynth: Fine-Grained Satellite Image Synthesis with Structured Semantics. In: IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV).
    bibtex | paper
  3. a thumbnail for Towards Open-World Generation of Stereo Images and Unsupervised Matching
    Qiao F, Xiong Z, Xing E, Jacobs N. 2025. Towards Open-World Generation of Stereo Images and Unsupervised Matching. In: IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV).
    bibtex | paper | website | linkedin | code
  4. a thumbnail for Global and Local Entailment Learning for Natural World Imagery
    Sastry S, Dhakal A, Xing E, Khanal S, Jacobs N. 2025. Global and Local Entailment Learning for Natural World Imagery. In: IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV).
    bibtex | paper | website | linkedin | code
  5. a thumbnail for ConText-CIR: Learning from Concepts in Text for Composed Image Retrieval
    Xing E, Kolouju P, Pless R, Stylianou A, Jacobs N. 2025. ConText-CIR: Learning from Concepts in Text for Composed Image Retrieval. In: IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR).
    bibtex | paper | linkedin | code
  6. a thumbnail for RANGE: Retrieval Augmented Neural Fields for Multi-Resolution Geo-Embeddings
    Dhakal A, Sastry S, Khanal S, Ahmad A, Xing E, Jacobs N. 2025. RANGE: Retrieval Augmented Neural Fields for Multi-Resolution Geo-Embeddings. In: IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR).
    bibtex | paper | linkedin | code
  7. a thumbnail for Mixed-View Panorama Synthesis using Geospatially Guided Diffusion
    Xiong Z, Xing X, Workman S, Khanal S, Jacobs N. 2025. Mixed-View Panorama Synthesis using Geospatially Guided Diffusion. Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR).
    bibtex | paper | website | linkedin
  8. a thumbnail for TaxaBind: A Unified Embedding Space for Ecological Applications
    Sastry S, Khanal S, Dhakal A, Ahmad A, Jacobs N. 2025. TaxaBind: A Unified Embedding Space for Ecological Applications. In: IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV).
    bibtex | paper | website | linkedin | code
  9. a thumbnail for Fields of The World: A Machine Learning Benchmark Dataset For Global Agricultural Field Boundary Segmentation
    Kerner H, Chaudhari S, Ghosh A, Robinson C, Ahmad A, Choi E, Jacobs N, Holmes C, Mohr M, Dodhia R, Ferres JML, Marcus J. 2025. Fields of The World: A Machine Learning Benchmark Dataset For Global Agricultural Field Boundary Segmentation. In: Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).
    bibtex | paper | website | linkedin | code
  10. a thumbnail for GOMAA-Geo: GOal Modality Agnostic Active Geo-localization
    Sarkar A, Sastry S, Pirinen A, Zhang C, Jacobs N, Vorobeychik Y. 2024. GOMAA-Geo: GOal Modality Agnostic Active Geo-localization. In: Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS).
    bibtex | paper | linkedin | code