With more than three decades of experience in academia and industry, including work at NASA in the 1990s, Chandra Kambhamettu believes that deep research and real-world problem solving aren’t mutually exclusive.
They’re inseparable.
His career has been shaped by a single question: How can we use advanced computing to solve high-stakes, real-world problems? And he has used that question for varied inquiries, ranging from using computer vision and velocity measurements to determine hurricane categories and dynamics at NASA, to developing biomedical imaging tools for cancer research, to creating sophisticated techniques to monitor environmental change.
This fall, Kambhamettu joins the University of South Florida’s Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing, one of the first colleges in the nation created specifically to address the convergence of these fields. He is part of a cohort of world-class scholars brought together to apply technology to society’s most pressing problems -- and prepare the next generation to do the same. He is bringing with him a multimillion-dollar research portfolio and a passion for interdisciplinary collaboration.
From punch cards to NASA
Kambhamettu began his journey in technology after seeing his father, who worked in computing, bring home punch cards from work. Intrigued by how stacks of cards could command a computer to perform tasks, he developed an early interest in programming and systems. His curiosity grew into a passion, ultimately leading him to USF to pursue a master’s degree, and later a doctorate, in computer vision.
He worked alongside faculty such as Dmitry Goldgof, exploring AI, facial recognition and motion tracking. That led to early-career publications and presentations at top-tier conferences.
He joined NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center as a research scientist in the early 1990s and developed algorithms to analyze hurricane imagery in near real time, helping turn satellite data into operational code to estimate storm strength and trajectory. His stereo imaging methods used multiple satellite angles to measure cloud movement and eye-wall depth to estimate storm strength. They proved so effective that they were operationalized at NASA and Kambhamettu received NASA’s Outstanding Scientist Award in 1996 for his contributions to hurricane visualization.
That NASA honor was the first of many. Kambhamettu’s contributions have earned honors such as the National Science Foundation’s NSF CAREER Award, which recognizes early-career researchers who blend teaching and scholarship. The University of Delaware, where he taught after leaving NASA, lauded his research for sustained excellence, and he has been recognized during international challenges for innovations in assistive technologies. While he doesn’t draw attention to the accolades, they reflect the lasting, real-world impact of his work.
Going beyond the computing discipline
His impact extends far beyond any one domain. From aerospace to agriculture, Kambhamettu has built a career on collaboration, working with experts across disciplines to solve real problems with vision-based AI. His collaborators have included computer scientists, oceanographers, radiologists, psychologists and environmental engineers, demonstrating the real-world versatility of AI and computer vision.
“If your research has no impact outside of your discipline,” he said, “you’re not asking a big enough question.”
Those big questions are what led him back to academia.
“NASA was incredible,” Kambhamettu said. “But they only wanted me to work on hurricanes. I was interested in medical imaging and facial recognition, too, anything where the impact could improve lives.”
That desire to broaden his research impact led Kambhamettu to the University of Delaware, where he directed the university’s Video/Image Modeling and Synthesis Lab. He served as principal investigator or co-PI on more than $15 million in sponsored research from agencies such as NSF, the National Institute of Health and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Photo courtesy of University of Delaware
One paper, "Deeply-Learned Feature for Age Estimation," had that long-lasting impact he hoped for when making the switch to academia. It introduced a deep learning approach for estimating a person’s age from facial images, a task traditionally hindered by variations in lighting, pose and expression. Kambhamettu and his collaborators demonstrated that features learned through a deep convolutional neural network significantly outperformed hand-crafted features used in prior models. The approach set a new standard for accuracy and its continued relevance earned the team the 2025 “Test of Time” award from Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision, recognizing the paper’s lasting impact on the field of computer vision and biometrics.
This award highlights the enduring contribution of Kambhamettu's research to the field of computer vision, which his team has applied to projects ranging from ice sheet dynamics to medical image analysis to facial modeling to drone-based sensing systems. He is a leader in the field and is one of two general chairs for the premier conference in computer vision, CVPR.
Recent work includes NSF-funded projects on 3D dynamic scene reconstruction, environmental monitoring through satellite and radar imagery, mapping natural disasters and machine learning for biomedical image analysis.
In one notable collaboration, he applied stereo imaging to track thinning ice in the polar regions and he received a group achievement award from NASA for the artic sea ice work. Another long-running project applies multi-modal sensing and machine learning to detect hidden, abandoned landmines. By capturing subtle changes in ground heat signatures and surface disturbance using drone-mounted sensors, they helped reduce human risk in mine detection.
He’s also worked on computer vision applications in agriculture, retail and forensic analysis, always tying the work back to a core principle: usefulness. The work illustrates that computer vision is about insight. It’s about giving machines the ability to see, interpret and act in ways that help people live safer, healthier and more informed lives.
“The real power of AI and computer vision is in solving problems people care about: health, safety, climate, food,” he said.
Teaching the next generation
Although he’s spent the last two decades in Delaware, returning to USF feels like a full-circle moment. He is bringing his lab and several doctoral students with him to Tampa. They will continue their work on prestigious grant projects and pursue new research opportunities. He will also teach graduate-level computer vision courses and mentor doctoral and undergraduate researchers.
His arrival reflects the Bellini College’s ambition to become a national leader in applied computing.
“We’re building a college around people who are pushing the boundaries of technology, making it count,” said Sudeep Sarkar, launch dean of the college. “Faculty joining the team are people like Dr. Kambhamettu: respected, visionary thinkers whose scholarship explores ways that technology can impact the world. It will be exciting to see how he and his fellow researchers educate the future workforce and explore ways to use technology to solve challenges of the future.”
