Justin W. Jacobs

Justin Jacobs leads the Spatial Statistics Group within the Geospatial Science and Human Security Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is a statistician and geometer whose research spans spatiotemporal analytics, uncertainty quantification, stochastic processes, and machine learning. His team focuses on probabilistic modeling and decision support for national security, population modeling, and infrastructure resilience.

Prior to joining ORNL, Justin was a Principal Statistician at Sandia National Laboratories, where he led multi-agency portfolios in spatial video analytics, recommender systems, and adversarial machine learning. He previously served as a research lead within the Intelligence Community, receiving the ODNI Medallion Award and the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (PECASE). He has also held research positions in professional sports and maintains strong academic ties through national lab–university partnerships.

Justin earned his Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he focused on nonparametric Bayesian methods on Riemannian manifolds.