Norhan Bayomi
Norhan Bayomi is a spatial AI researcher and Co-founder of MIT Environmental Research + Action (ERA), where she directs the Spatial Intelligence for Environmental Reasoning and AI Laboratory (SIERA). Her research integrates robotic sensing, computer vision, and structured generative models to address climate resilience, energy efficiency, and biodiversity monitoring at the planetary scale. As ERA’s computational and spatial-AI engine, SIERA develops foundational world-modeling systems that allow AI to understand the physical world with unprecedented fidelity, from individual building envelopes to planetary urban networks.
Norhan’s primary research agenda investigates whether AI can develop genuine spatial intelligence for the built and natural environment. Recent benchmarks confirm that frontier vision-language models fail on foundational spatial tasks; Norhan’s work addresses these failures through several interconnected projects. Complementary research thrusts span multimodal sensing, generative AI, and embodied intelligence. In sensing, Norhan has developed physics-informed segmentation models and end-to-end UAV systems that integrate thermal, LiDAR, and multispectral sensors, resulting in two U.S. patents and deployments across the U.S., Colombia, and the Gulf region. Her CLIM-SEG model demonstrates transfer learning across heat- and flood-hazard domains. In generative AI, she is a Co-PI of GENIUS with Dr. Omar Khattab, MIT EECS, a DSPy-ColBERT pipeline structuring climate policies. In embodied intelligence, she developed ECO-LENS, a deep learning framework for urban biodiversity mapping, and led the technical development of DEECA (Drone for Equitable Climate Change Adaptation), which mobilizes drone-enabled computer vision for climate risk monitoring in the Colombian Amazon.
Before establishing ERA, Norhan served as a Research Scientist and Postdoctoral Associate at the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative, where she led AI-driven climate risk assessment in ESI’s Cities and Climate program. She has raised over $3.5 million in competitive research funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, the Global Environment Facility, the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium, the MIT Generative AI Consortium, and the HPI-MIT Design for Sustainability program, and holds two U.S. patents from DOE-funded research.
Norhan has designed and taught courses at MIT on machine learning for climate challenges, aerial robotics, and AI venture design, and has mentored more than 30 students from over a dozen countries, with nearly 75% continuing to advanced degrees or research careers. Her work has been published in journals including Climate Risk Management, Advanced Engineering Informatics, Energy and Buildings, and Drones, and she serves as a reviewer for the Bezos Earth Fund AI for Climate and Nature Grand Challenge. She is Co-Director of the MIT Climate Machine, a research group focusing on developing computational methods for the entertainment industry’s carbon assessment.
Beyond academia, Norhan is Co-founder of Lamarr.AI, which provides building envelope inspection and energy-efficiency assessment via drones and machine learning, and previously co-founded AirWorks, an AI-powered geospatial planning platform that raised $26 million and served over 50 AEC clients. Norhan received her Ph.D. and M.S. in Building Technology from MIT (2021, 2017).
