PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Esther Rolf

Esther Rolf is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Colorado Boulder whose research spans algorithmic fairness, statistical machine learning and global satellite-imagery modeling. After graduating from Princeton University in 2016, she coauthored fairness research that won an ICML 2018 Best Paper Award and welfare-aware machine learning work that earned a 2019 NeurIPS workshop Best Paper Award. In July 2021, she introduced MOSAIKS for planet-scale predictions from global satellite imagery, a system recognized in 2023 with a UN SDG Digital GameChangers award in the Planet category. She completed a computer science PhD at UC Berkeley in 2022, held a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, joined CU Boulder in Fall 2024, and in 2025 coauthored SatCLIP and won a Best Student Paper Award with Arjun Rao at an ICLR remote sensing workshop. At CU Boulder, she directs the Geospatial and Environmental Machine Learning lab and serves as the AI/ML lead for the Environmental Data Science Innovation and Impact Lab and a scientific director for the Togo Data Lab.

Now at
ESIIL and Togo Data Lab

Timeline

  1. 2016

    Computer science at Princeton

    She graduates from Princeton University in 2016 with a B.S.E. in Computer Science.

  2. 2018

    A best paper on fairness

    With Lydia T. Liu, Sarah Dean, Max Simchowitz and Moritz Hardt, she coauthors “Delayed Impact of Fair Machine Learning,” which wins an ICML 2018 Best Paper Award. The study demonstrates that even in a one-step feedback model, common fairness criteria in general do not promote improvement over time.

  3. 2019

    Welfare-aware learning at NeurIPS

    In 2019, she coauthors “Balancing Competing Objectives for Welfare-Aware Machine Learning with Imperfect Data” with Max Simchowitz and Sarah Dean at UC Berkeley, winning the Track 1 Best Paper Award at the NeurIPS Joint Workshop on AI for Social Good.

  4. July 2021

    MOSAIKS for satellite imagery

    In July 2021, she is first author of a Nature Communications paper introducing MOSAIKS, an approach to machine learning with global satellite imagery designed to solve tasks at planet-scale. After a one-time unsupervised image featurization using random convolutional features, a user can solve each task on a desktop computer in minutes without manipulating the imagery.

  5. 2022

    A Berkeley PhD and Harvard postdoc

    She completes a PhD in Computer Science at UC Berkeley in 2022, advised by Ben Recht and Michael I. Jordan and supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a Google Research Fellowship and a UC Berkeley Stonebreaker Fellowship. After earning her doctorate in 2022, she joins the Harvard Data Science Initiative as a postdoctoral fellow affiliated with the Center for Research on Computation and Society.

  6. 2023

    An SDG award for MOSAIKS

    Her work receives a 2023 SDG Digital GameChangers award from the United Nations Development Programme and the International Telecommunication Union, where MOSAIKS wins the Planet category. The ITU describes MOSAIKS as a generalizable and accessible approach to machine learning based on Earth-orbiting satellite imagery that aims to support informed policies on climate and sustainability.

  7. 2025

    SatCLIP and remote sensing award

    In 2025, she coauthors SatCLIP, a model for global, general-purpose location embeddings with satellite imagery published at AAAI 2025 with Konstantin Klemmer, Caleb Robinson and colleagues. At the ICLR 2025 Workshop on Machine Learning for Remote Sensing, Rolf and Arjun Rao win a Best Student Paper Award for “Using Multiple Input Modalities Can Improve Data-efficiency for ML with Satellite Imagery.”

  8. Since 2024

    Assistant professor at CU Boulder

    Starting in Fall 2024, she is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she directs the Geospatial and Environmental Machine Learning (GEM) lab and coauthors “Mission Critical -- Satellite Data is a Distinct Modality in Machine Learning” with Hannah Kerner, Konstantin Klemmer and Caleb Robinson at ICML 2024. Her 2026 JMLR study of tree canopy height in African savannas finds that small models trained only with locally collected data outperform published global maps and fine-tuned globally pretrained models. At CU Boulder, she develops machine learning systems that transform satellite data into general-purpose representations of Earth, and serves as the AI/ML lead for the Environmental Data Science Innovation and Impact Lab (ESIIL) and a scientific director for the Togo Data Lab.

Career

  1. Since 2024University of Colorado BoulderAssistant professor
  2. NowESIILAI/ML lead
  3. NowTogo Data LabScientific director

Education

  1. 2022University of California, BerkeleyPhD in Computer Science
  2. 2016Princeton UniversityB.S.E. in Computer Science

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Esther Rolf. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes University of Colorado. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University of Colorado. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes University of Colorado. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Esther Rolf yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Esther Rolf — Global Policy Lab solomon-hsiang.squarespace.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. ICML 2018 Awards icml.cc. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. Delayed Impact of Fair Machine Learning proceedings.mlr.press. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. Esther Rolf - bio estherrolf.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. NeurIPS Joint Workshop on AI for Social Good NeurIPS2019 aiforsocialgood.github.io. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. A generalizable and accessible approach to machine learning with global satellite imagery | Nature Communications nature.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. The 2022 Harvard Data Science Initiative Postdoctoral Fellows datascience.harvard.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  8. SDG Digital GameChangers Award: Meet the Winners - ITU itu.int. Checked 22 October 2026.
  9. SatCLIP: Global, General-Purpose Location Embeddings with Satellite Imagery ojs.aaai.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  10. Machine Learning for Remote Sensing | ICLR 2025 ml-for-rs.github.io. Checked 22 October 2026.
  11. Esther Rolf Personal Website estherrolf.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  12. Esther Rolf, Ph.D. - data.org data.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  13. New Computer Science Faculty, 2024 | Computer Science | University of Colorado Boulder colorado.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  14. AI designed to work with us | University of Colorado Boulder colorado.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  15. Contrasting Local and Global Modeling with Machine Learning and Satellite Data: A Case Study Estimating Tree Canopy Height in African Savannas | JMLR jmlr.org. Checked 22 October 2026.