Anthony Ortiz

Research

Selected Work

Projects I’m proud of. See Research for more and Publications for the full list.

Geospatial ML · Open Source

TorchGeo

A PyTorch domain library for geospatial data — datasets, samplers, transforms, and pretrained models that make Earth-observation deep learning as easy as torchvision.

ACM TSAS 2025 Code

Earth Observation · 2025

Global Renewables Watch

A living atlas of the world’s utility-scale solar and onshore wind, mapped quarterly from satellite imagery with deep learning — built with Planet and The Nature Conservancy.

arXiv Code NYT

Humanitarian · Disaster Response

Rapid Building Damage Assessment

Open-source pipeline that turns post-event satellite imagery into building-damage estimates within hours — deployed across 30+ responses spanning floods, earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes, and tornadoes, with results browsable in our public visualizer.

Visualizer Code Planet Pulse

Humanitarian · 2024 GitHub Award for Good

Mapping Refugee Settlements with AI

AI-assisted mapping of the Kakuma and Kalobeyei refugee settlements in Kenya from drone and satellite imagery — with UNHCR and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team — to improve infrastructure planning, services, and energy access for displaced communities.

WACVW 2025 PGRID (WACV 2025) UNHCR HOT GitHub Awards 2024

Health · 2025

AI-enabled screening for Retinopathy of Prematurity in low-resource settings

Deep-learning system to triage ROP from neonatal fundus images, validated in clinical settings where pediatric ophthalmologists are scarce.

JAMA Network Open Ophthalmology Times

Earth Observation · 2022

An AI inventory of every utility-scale solar farm in India

National-scale dataset built from satellite imagery to inform renewable-energy policy and siting decisions.

Scientific Data Press

Earth Observation · 2021

Tracking glacial melt at the top of the world

Open data and ML to monitor the Hindu Kush Himalaya glaciers — work funded by an $18K Microsoft AI Research Grant.

Microsoft On the Issues

Conservation · 2022

Detecting beached whales (and elk and cattle) from space

Very-high-resolution satellite imagery + deep learning for biodiversity and wildlife monitoring at scale.

The Atlantic arXiv

Core ML · CVPR 2020

Local Context Normalization

A drop-in normalization layer that improves generalization of dense-prediction networks across geographies.

CVPR Paper

Selected Publications

• TorchGeo: Deep Learning with Geospatial Data ACM TSAS · 2025
• AI-Enabled Screening for Retinopathy of Prematurity in Low-Resource Settings JAMA Network Open · 2025
• Global Renewables Watch: A Temporal Dataset of Solar and Wind Energy from Satellite Imagery arXiv · 2025
• An Artificial Intelligence Dataset for Solar Energy Locations in India Nature Scientific Data · 2022
• Local Context Normalization: Revisiting Local Normalization CVPR · 2020

See all publications →

Experience

• June 2020 — Present

  Microsoft | AI for Good Lab

  AI researcher in geospatial machine learning, medical imaging, and computer vision in support of Microsoft’s AI for Good initiatives.

  1. Principal Research Science Manager Current
     March 2024 — Present
  2. Senior Research Scientist
     Sept 2021 — March 2024
  3. Research Scientist
     June 2020 — Aug 2021
• June — Aug 2019

  Orbital Insight · Computer Vision / Deep Learning Research Intern

  Conditional image generation with GANs for synthetic satellite imagery.

• March — June 2019

  Microsoft Research · AI Research Intern

  Model generalization, human-machine collaboration, transfer learning, and land-cover mapping with Nebojsa Jojic and Dan Morris.

• Aug 2018 — March 2019

  Visiting Researcher

  Mila · University of Montréal

  Generalization, variational inference, and remote sensing for social good with Yoshua Bengio.

• Aug 2017 — June 2020

  Ph.D. Research Associate

  Intelligent Agents and Strategic Reasoning Lab, UTEP

  Conditional computation, adversarial ML, generative modeling and geospatial analytics with Christopher Kiekintveld.

Education

News & Media

• 2025Global Renewables Watch released and featured in The New York Times.
• 2025First-author paper in JAMA Network Open: AI-Enabled Screening for Retinopathy of Prematurity in Low-Resource Settings.
• 2025TorchGeo: Deep Learning with Geospatial Data published in ACM TSAS.
• 2024Mapping Refugee Settlements with AI won the 2024 GitHub Award for Good.
• 2024Honored with Microsoft CELA’s Data Scientist of the Year Award.
• Mar 2024Promoted to Principal Research Science Manager at the Microsoft AI for Good Lab.

Mentoring

Selected interns and students I have had the privilege to mentor — current roles in parentheses.

• Isaac Corley · Research Scientist, WeRobotics
• Bibek Aryal · Software Engineer, Microsoft
• Alonso Granados · PhD Student, University of Arizona
• Zachary Bell · Senior Software Engineer, USAA
• Gerardo Uranga · Software Engineer, Walt Disney (prev. Microsoft, DocuSign)

Contact