Jake H. Lee

About

I am a data scientist at the NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Machine Learning and Instrument Autonomy group. CV: pdf

Contact/Links

personal: jakehlee1 (at) gmail.com
work: jake.h.lee (at) jpl.nasa.gov
twitter: @jakehlee
github: @jakehlee
linkedin: link
flickr: jakehlee
vimeo: jakehlee

Places I've worked at

• California Institute of Technology
  Visiting Lecturer, Winter Quarter 2023 :
  • Lectured the second half of CS155: Machine Learning and Data Mining.
  • Course website at [link]
  • Recorded lectures on YouTube at [playlist]
• NASA JPL Machine Learning and Instrument Autonomy Group
  Data Scientist, July 2020 to Current :
  • On-board autonomy for the Ocean Worlds Life Surveyor's mass spectrometry and microscopy instruments.
  • Automated characterization of RSLs on Mars with high-resolution digital terrain maps
  • Detection of methane plumes from AVIRIS-NG, GAO, and future spaceborne platforms
  • Estimation of global vegetation height from global radar products
  • Evaluation of industry standard data science toolsets for JPL use cases
• NASA JPL Machine Learning and Instrument Autonomy Group
  Intern under Dr. Kiri Wagstaff, Summer of 2017, 2018, 2019:
  • Multi-year research of an explainable method to discover novel and interesting images in large data sets.
  • Presented as an invited talk at NIPS 2017 Interpretable ML Symposium ([video], [slides])
  • See my [2017 Summer Presentation], [2018 Summer Presentation] [2019 Summer Presentation].
• Columbia Plasma Physics Laboratory (HBT-EP)
  Lab Assistant under John Brooks, Winter of 2016 to Spring of 2017:
  
  • Making switchboxes for sensor and power electronics
  • Maintaining a Phantom high-speed camera and integrating it into the network infrastructure
  • Reviewing and understanding existing Tokamak control code and identifying possible optimizations (C/CUDA)
• Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Ocean and Climate Physics
  Research/Lab Assistant under Dr. Christopher Zappa, Fall of 2016 to Fall of 2017:
  • Analyzing shortwave and longwave radiation albedo data from a UAV flight over Svalbard, Greenland with MATLAB and generating a GIS visualization of it. Example [PNG].
  • Speccing out and locally integrating new environmental sensors for a fixed-wing UAV
  • Maintaining, restoring, and calibrating a quad-camera polarimeter for fieldwork on the R/V Falkor
• University of Nevada, Las Vegas Computer Science Dept.
  Research Assistant under Dr. Yoohwan Kim, Summer of 2015:
  • Performed a survey of the bitcoin mining hardware market in hopes of predicting the future behavior of the hardware market as well as the bitcoin mining difficulty. Whitepaper available [PDF].
• University of Nevada, Las Vegas Astrophysics Dept.
  Research Assistant under Dr. Amanda Maxham, Summer of 2013, 2014:
  • Researched the behavior of high altitude balloons in the atmosphere, specifically on achieving neutral buoyancy without active controls.
  • Discussed my findings in my "Extended Essay" requirement for the International Baccalaureate diploma. Available [PDF].

Publications

2024

• Mark Wronkiewicz, Jake Lee, Lukas Mandrake, Jack Lightholder, Gary Doran, Steffen Mauceri, Taewoo Kim, Nathan Oborny, Thomas Schibler, Jay Nadeau, James K. Wallace, Eshaan Moorjani, Chris Lindensmith
  "Onboard Science Instrument Autonomy for the Detection of Microscopy Biosignatures on the Ocean Worlds Life Surveyor"
  The Planetary Science Journal, 5 19, 2024.
  [Preprint] [AAS PSJ]

2023

• Jake Lee, Brian D Bue, Andrew K Thorpe, Daniel Cusworth, Alana Ayasse, and Riley Duren
  "Deep Learning Saliency and Segmentation Methods for Robust Methane Plume Detection"
  AGU Fall Meeting, 2023, #A43R-3011.
  [AGU] [Abstract/Poster]
• Brian Bue, Jake Lee, Jack Lightholder, Andrew K Thorpe, Daniel Cusworth, Alana Ayasse, and Riley Duren
  "Towards Operational Automated Methane Plume Monitoring"
  AGU Fall Meeting, 2023, #A11C-07.
  [AGU]
• Anagha Satish, Brian D Bue, Jake Lee, Andrew K Thorpe, Daniel Cusworth, Alana Ayasse, and Riley Duren
  "Improving Deep Learning Methods for Robust Methane Plume Detection using Alternative Input Representations"
  AGU Fall Meeting, 2023, #A43R-3021.
  [AGU]
• Vassiliki Mancoridis, Brian D Bue, Jake Lee, Andrew K Thorpe, Daniel Cusworth, Alana Ayasse, and Riley Duren
  "Leveraging Airborne Data to Enable Spaceborne Methane Plume Detection via Model and Data Driven Approaches"
  AGU Fall Meeting, 2023, #A43R-3022.
  [AGU]
• Philip Brodrick, Jay Fahlen, Red Willow Willow Coleman, David R Thompson, Andrew K Thorpe, Clayton Elder, Claire Villanueva-Weeks, Amanda Lopez, Jake Lee, Brian D Bue, K. Dana Chadwick, and Robert O Green
  "Algorithm advances for an operational imaging spectroscopy greenhouse gas detection system - lessons from EMIT after a year in orbit"
  AGU Fall Meeting, 2023, #A43R-3009.
  [AGU]

2022

• Jake Lee, Brian Bue, Micahel Garay, Andrew Thorpe, Riley Duren, Daniel Cusworth, Alana Ayasse.
  "Robust Multi-Campaign Imaging Spectrometer Methane Plume Detection using Deep Learning"
  AGU Fall Meeting, 2022, #A15L-1395.
  [Abstract/Poster]
• Jake Lee, Samuel Favrichon, Steffen Mauceri, Yan Yang, John Armston, Sassan Saatchi.
  "Addressing Underestimation in Global Forest Structure Mapping"
  AGU Fall Meeting, 2022.
  [Abstract/Slides]
• Steffen Mauceri, Jake Lee, Mark Wronkiewicz, Lukas Mandrake, Gary Doran, Jack Lightholder, Zuzana Cieslarova, Miranda Kok, M. Fernanda Mora, Aaron Craig Noell.
  "Autonomous CE Mass-Spectra Examination (ACME) for the Ocean Worlds Life Surveyor"
  Earth and Space Science, 2022.
  [AGU Earth and Space]
• Fabien H. Wagner, Ricardo Dalagnol, Alber H Sánchez, Mayumi C. M. Hirye, Samuel Favrichon, Jake H. Lee, Steffen Mauceri, Yan Yang, and Sassan Saatchi
  "K-textures, a self-supervised hard clustering deep learning algorithm for satellite image segmentation"
  Frontiers in Environmental Science, 2022.
  [Frontiers]
• Megan M Dubay, Nikki Johnston, Mark Wronkiewicz, Jake Lee, Christian A Lindensmith, Jay L Nadeau.
  "Quantification of Motility in Bacillus subtilis at Temperatures Up to 84°C Using a Submersible Volumetric Microscope and Automated Tracking
  Frontiers in Microbiology, 2022.
  [Frontiers]
• Hannah Kerner, Umaa Rebbapragada, Kiri L Wagstaff, Steven Lu, Bryce Dubayah, Eric Huff, Jake Lee, Vinay Raman, Sakshum Kulshrestha.
  "Domain-agnostic Outlier Ranking Algorithms (DORA)-A Configurable Pipeline for Facilitating Outlier Detection in Scientific Datasets"
  Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, 2022.
  [Frontiers]

2021

• Jack Lightholder, Mark Wronkiewicz, Jake Lee, Thomas Schibler, Steffen Mauceri, Gary Doran, Eshaan Moorjani, Christian Lindensmith, Lukas Mandrake.
  "Onboard Science Autonomy for the Ocean Worlds Life Surveyor (OWLS) Instrument Suite"
  American Geophysical Union 2021 Fall Meeting, 2021.
  [tbd]
• Arjun Ashok Rao, Steffen Mauceri, Andrew Thorpe, Jake Lee, Siraput Jongaramrungruang, Riley Duren.
  "Improving Imaging Spectrometer Methane Plume Detection with Large Eddy Simulations"
  American Geophysical Union 2021 Fall Meeting, 2021, #GC45B-0838.
  [abstract/poster]
• Jake Lee, Steffen Mauceri, Jack Lightholder, Mark Wronkiewicz, Gary Doran, Lukas Mandrake, Zuzana Cieslarova, Miranda Kok, Maria Mora, Aaron Noell.
  "Onboard Autonomous Summarization and Prioritization of CE-ESI MS Data for the Ocean Worlds Life Surveyor"
  American Geophysical Union 2021 Fall Meeting, 2021, #P15C-2112.
  [abstract/poster]
• Jake Lee, Steffen Mauceri, Sharmita Dey, Arjun Ashok Rao, Ryan Alimo, Andrew Thorpe, Siraput Jongaramrungruang, Riley Duren.
  "Methane Plume Detection weith Future Orbital Imaging Spectrometers"
  American Geophysical Union 2021 Fall Meeting, 2021, #GC15B-0690.
  [abstract/poster]
• D. E. Stillman, K. M. Primm, B. Bue, K. L. Wagstaff, J. H. Lee, A. Ansar.
  "RSL Geostatistics Show Slopes Above the Angle of Repose and Significant Enhancement After Mars Year 34 Dust Storm"
  52nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, 2021.
  [abstract] [adsabs]
• Kiri Wagstaff, Steven Lu, Emily Dunkel, Kevin Grimes, Brandon Zhao, Jesse Cai, Shoshanna B. Cole, Gary Doran, Raymond Francis, Jake Lee, and Lukas Mandrake.
  "Mars Image Content Classification: Three Years of NASA Deployment and Recent Advances"
  The Thirty-Fifth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-21), 2021.
  [abstract] [AAAI Proceedings]

2018-2020

• Horton, P., Ravichandar, S., Lee, J., Kerner, H. R., Natha, A., Soliman, T. K., Grimes, K., Wagstaff, K., Verma, R., McAuley, J.
  "Novelty and Discovery Content Analysis Methods for the Planetary Data System Image Atlas"
  American Geophysical Union 2020 Fall Meeting, 2020, #P004-0013.
  [abstract]
• Lee, Jake H. and Wagstaff, Kiri L.
  "Visualizing Image Content to Explain Novel Image Discovery"
  Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 2020.
  [arXiv] [Springer] [paper website]
• Lee J., Yang J., Wang Z.
  "What Does CNN Shift Invariance Look Like? A Visualization Study"
  2020 European Conference on Computer Vision Workshop on Real-World Computer Vision from Inputs with Limited Quality (RLQ-TOD), 2020.
  [arXiv] [Springer] [paper website] [interactive demo] [presentation video]
• Lu, S., Wagstaff, K., Cai, J., Doran, G.B. Jr., Grimes, K., Lee, J., Mandrake, L.
  "Content-based Classification of Mars Imagery for the PDS Image Atlas"
  American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2019, 2019, #P43E-3509.
  [abstract]
• S. Lu, K. L. Wagstaff, J. Cai, G. Doran, K. Grimes, J. Lee, L. Mandrake, Y. Yue.
  "Improved Content-Based Image Classifiers for the PDS Image Atlas"
  4th Planetary Data Workshop, 2019.
  [pdf]
• Wagstaff, Kiri L., and Lee, Jake.
  "Interpretable Discovery in Large Image Data Sets"
  2018 ICML Workshop on Human Interpretability in Machine Learning, 2018, pp.107-113.
  [arXiv] [Workshop] [paper website]

Organizations

• NYC Makes PPE: Helped organize, manufacture, and deliver hundreds of thousands of personal protective equipment in NYC during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Contributions included logistics, DIY PPE design, and strategy/direction.
• Columbia Social Entrepeneurship Group Tech: Founder and former director of CSEG Tech. Provided dedicated tech and data science services to social impact organizations, including nonprofits and social enterprises.
• Columbia Space Initiative: High Altitude Balloons Mission Director, led a team of students to launch a balloon with scientific payloads to ~100,000ft. First launch in 2016 received a lot of media coverage by Columbia University. Visit the mission page here. I am currently a senior advisor.
• Columbia Makerspace: Superuser (student volunteer) for the workshop. The makerspace provides various tools and materials, such as 3D printing and laser cutting, to students and faculty. Also consulted on various projects that come through the space and assisted other labs as necessary.
• Columbia Pops Orchestra: Cellist and video producer for the Pops Orchestra. All pieces are pop, movie, and video game soundtracks arranged and performed by students.
• Columbia University Amateur Radio Club: Some maintenance and contacts during freshman year.

Media

• NYCMakesPPE Interview, Bloomberg TV, April 1st, 2020
• Lessons Learned by NYC Makers Producing Personal Protective Equipment for Medics, IEEE Spectrum, March 30th, 2020
• Team Space: Columbia Space Initiative Taking Engineering to Extreme New Places, Columbia Engineering Newsletter, May 16th 2016
• District must provide science, math opportunities for all, Las Vegas Review Journal, May 16th, 2016
• Roaree Goes to Space, BWOG, April 25th, 2016
• Edouard Lalo's Concerto in D Minor, Youtube, May 12th, 2015
• Israeli competition challenges safe-cracking skills of 4 Clark County school teams, Las Vegas Review Journal, February 27th, 2015
• Teenagers Step Up to Launch Portal 2's Space Core ... to Spaaaaaaace, Kotaku, July 29th, 2012