Hannah Kerner

Hannah Kerner is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence at Arizona State University, where she leads cutting-edge research at the intersection of machine learning and remote sensing. Her work applies AI to global challenges such as food security, climate change, and planetary exploration, with strong collaborations through NASA Harvest and NASA ACRES consortia.

Research Interests: Her research focuses on algorithmic advances for sparse and heterogeneous geospatial data, including agricultural land cover classification, novelty/anomaly detection, change detection, geographic fairness in AI, and AI-assisted planetary exploration. She develops methods to improve model generalization, mitigate geographic bias, and enable scalable ground-truth labeling via projects like Street2Sat.

Publication Trends: Her recent publications demonstrate a strong trend toward foundational models for Earth monitoring (e.g., Galileo), fairness in AI (geographic and directional bias), automated detection of natural phenomena (volcanic features, seagrass), and the development of benchmark datasets (Fields of the World). Her work spans computer vision, NLP, and environmental science, emphasizing real-world impact.

• Scientific Awards:
• Forbes 30 Under 30
• Best Paper Award at CVPR 2024
• Oral Presentation at WACV 2023 (2.5% acceptance rate)
• Spotlight Poster at ICML 2024 (3.5% acceptance rate)
• Top 10 project by IRCAI for SDG impact

Advising and Grants: Dr. Kerner actively mentors a large research group, advising numerous PhD, MS, and undergraduate students across ASU and partner institutions. Her research is supported by major funders including NASA, NSF, Google, and the Taylor Geospatial Engine, reflecting its high impact and interdisciplinary nature.

Labs and Teams: She leads a dynamic research group at ASU focused on geospatial machine learning and is a key contributor to the NASA Harvest and ACRES consortia, which apply satellite observations to global agricultural monitoring and food security.