Biography

David Jacobs has been a computer science faculty member at UMD since 2002. He was named director of the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, effective September 6, 2026.

A leading scientist in the fields of computer vision and machine learning with a focus on visual object recognition and handling lighting variations, he has worked on a wide range of interdisciplinary projects, collaborating with researchers in electrical engineering, applied mathematics, botany, psychology, chemistry, public policy and more. Jacobs also explores image clustering, structure-from-motion, and the intersections of vision with user interfaces and graphics.

He has published over 160 papers in refereed journals, conferences and workshops and holds five U.S. patents. He has supervised more than 50 high school, undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.

Jacobs has held many leadership roles on campus, including director of the Center for Machine Learning (2019-22), computer science associate chair for graduate admissions (2017-19), and associate director for the neuroscience and cognitive science graduate program (2007-10). He also led the development of the Science Academy master’s degree programs in applied machine learning, data science and artificial intelligence.

He previously worked as an engineering manager at Meta (2022-24) and a visiting scholar at the Federation of American Scientists.

Jacobs earned his B.A. in mathematics from Yale University in 1982 and his M.S. in computer science in 1988 and his Ph.D. in computer science in 1992 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.