Jacob Bieker
Astrophysicist & Photographer
Who I am
I am currently a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Vida, where I focus on geospatial foundation models, climate risk for infrastructure, and climate forecasting models. I was previously a Senior Machine Learning Research Engineer at Open Climate Fix, where I focused on developing and deploying models for predicting satellite data and solar energy output. I previously was at Scale AI, where I focused on building models for 3D use cases, primarily with LiDAR and image data. I graduated with my BSc in Physics and Computer Science from the University of Oregon, and my MSc in Astronomy and Data Science from Leiden Observatory.
What I do
I use computers to fix climate change, currently through creating a better understanding of climate risk for infrastructure, as well as on bettering weather forecasts through ML. I worked to make better predictions for solar energy nowcasting so the elecrical grid can be more efficient. I research galaxies, especially high redshift ones, to discover how our Universe came to be. I also apply machine learning to astronomy to explore its applications. In my free time, I hike, ski, and shoot landscape and night sky photography around the world.
What I've Done
I use my interest in computing and interdisciplinary research to study massive sets of data and produce insights in various contexts, including astronomy, biology, and Earth observations. I've done this at Google, NASA, Leiden Observatory, TU Dortmund, Scale AI, Open Climate Fix, Martian, and now Vida.
My Experience
My research interests are focused on interdisciplinary research, especially in astronomy, but also biology and computer science. I've done research at NASA on hyperspectral data and productionized machine learning algorithms for Google's Gsuite. At Scale AI, I built up models for prelabelling autonomous vehicle data and linting the outputs from human taskers to improve the human-in-the-loop system. Some of my current and past research is shown below. My CV is available here, ADS here, and Google Scholar
Astronomy
- Used machine learning to find optical counterparts for LOFAR
- Studying CO emitting galaxies as part of Wide-ASPECS
- Researched galaxy evolution with the Gemini/Hubble Galaxy Cluster Project
- Improved unfolding of the detector response for an Air Cherenkov Telescope
- Used deep learning to analyze air shower images
Climate
- Build and run state-of-the-art renewable energy forecasting models
- Released hundreds of terabytes of climate, weather, and energy data in ARCO formats
- Use graph neural networks for weather forecasting
- Work as part of the ITU's Project Resilience
- Contribute and help build the open data/open science community around energy forecasting
- Build climate risk indicators and climate forecasting models for infrastructure risk
Misc. Research
- Developed machine learning algorithms for onboard satellite hyperspectral analysis
- Used photogammetry to study morphology of statues on Rapa Nui
- Visualized and compared ATLAS and CMS luminosity data
- Studied how the gut microbiome in zebrafish affects their development
- Developed tools for use in various research groups as part of the Computational Biology department at OHSU
- Used Natural Language Processing to study how scientific software projects are used in different fields
- Created a benchmark for LLM Model Routing, RouterBench
Scientific Outreach
- Taught visitors about astronomy and how to use telescopes at Pine Mountain Observatory
- Developed an interactive website to intuitively teach astronomy concepts to the general public and incoming students
- Created virtual reality systems to more easily show people structures of biological systems and astronomical phenomena
Software Development
- Created software for the administration of REU programs
- Productionized machine learning algorithms for Google's Gsuite
- Personal Insights for individual data mining
- Python Package for Deep Learning for the FACT telescope
- Android app to control cameras with the Myo armband
- Created a virtual reality program for visualizing biological sample scans.
- Developed software for use in gene sequencing for Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU)
My Photography
My photography is primarily based around landscapes, the night sky and pushing the technical limits of the camera and computing while creating gigapixel images.
