Raj Bhattarai

About

I'm a geospatial researcher and engineer pursuing my MS in Geography at Virginia Tech, where I build AI systems for urban change detections. My work including MURD-ViT, a 1st-place winner at the NSF-funded I-GUIDE Spatial AI Challenge 2025–26, sits at the intersection of GeoAI, Earth observation, and urban resilience. Before grad school, I spent three years in industry designing geospatial backends and drone imagery pipelines. I'm passionate about open, reproducible science and am actively exploring opportunities including research collaborations, in GeoAI and Earth Observation.


Personal Info


I am a simple grounded individual from a beautiful country of the Himalayas, Nepal, located in South Asia, seeking to aspire in geospatial world.

  • Location: Blacksburg, Virginia, USA
  • Website: rajbhattarai.com.np
  • Language: English, Nepali
  • Interests: GeoAI, GeoLLMs, Earth Observation, Urban Retrofitting

My Tools

Education

M.S. in Geography (STEM)

Jan 2025 - Dec 2026

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA

GPA: 4.0/4.0

  • Coursework: Spatial Data Science, Analysis of Spatial Data, Advanced Modeling with GIS, Advanced Remote Sensing, Advanced Generative AI Applications in Social Science.

Bachelor of Engineering in Geomatics

Aug 2017 - Dec 2021

Kathmandu University, Dhulikhel, Nepal

GPA: 3.92/4.0

  • Coursework: C, C++, Java, Python, Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing, Spatial DBMS, GIS, Web Mapping, Surveying.

Professional Experience

Graduate Research & Teaching Assistant

Jan 2025 - Dec 2026

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, GeoComputeLab, Blacksburg, VA

  • Conducting research on multimodal urban change detection using Vision Transformers and Vision Language Models under Dr. Fangzheng Lyu; first-authored paper under review at IEEE JSTARS.
  • Designing the CEG-VQA pipeline: an automated VQA generation system for street-level temporal change detection using 7,376 Google Street View temporal pairs (2013–2023) with fine-tuning of Qwen3-VL via QLoRA.
  • Instructed lab sessions for Advanced Remote Sensing (GEOG 5354G), Spring 2025.
  • Assisted lab sessions for Elements of GIS (GEOG 5064), Fall 2025.
  • Facilitated labs for Spatial Data Science (GEOG 5984) and Geospatial Tools (GEOG 2984), Spring 2026.

Senior Backend Developer

May 2023 - Jan 2025

Geonadir, Australia - Remote

  • Architected and scaled backend systems utilizing Python, microservices, and REST APIs to manage a drone data repository exceeding 2.5 million Earth Observation datasets.
  • Processed, visualized, and analyzed multispectral drone datasets, handling multi-band imagery pipelines including band math, spectral indices, and image enhancement workflows.
  • Integrated SAM and DINO AI vision models for automated object detection, segmentation, and feature mapping from Earth Observation imagery.
  • Engineered processing pipelines for Orthomosaics, DSMs, and DTMs with dynamic Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG) and STAC tiling.
  • Collaborated autonomously within a multinational remote team to ensure high system uptime, fault tolerance, and continuous delivery via automated CI/CD pipelines.

Geospatial Developer

Feb 2022 - Jan 2025

Naxa Private Limited, Kathmandu, Nepal

  • Led backend and frontend development of web-based GIS SaaS applications using Python, React, and microservices, delivering features across mapping, routing, and utility GIS use cases.
  • Designed and maintained REST APIs and geoprocessing functionalities for map visualization, ensuring seamless integration of large geospatial datasets.
  • Partnered with clients to gather requirements and took end-to-end ownership of troubleshooting, maintaining, and enhancing existing SaaS tools and web services.
  • Mentored junior developers and collaborated across cross-functional engineering and product teams.

Portfolio

I have worked on a number of projects which includes spatial analysis, drones, computer vision, raster analysis and many more.

  • All
  • GIS
  • Remote Sensing

MURD-ViT

Urban Retrofitting Detection with a ViT-based model using multimodal data.

GEONADIR

Manage, process, analyze, and collaborate with your drone mapping data.

USAFIRI

An integrated data management, mapping and analysis tool for data driven project planning.

Regression Analysis of NDVI for Vegetation Trend of Nepal

A research to inflict the impact of the seasonal change to the vegetation and crop pattern across Nepal.

Metric Addressing System

A web-based GIS system to view and generate dynamic metric address of houses.

Changunarayan Open Data Portal

An integrated public portal for disseminating ward level spatial and demographic datasets.

Utility Management System

A web enabled system for management of the utilities and infrastructure of Kathmandu University.

Detection of Landcover Change of Kathmandu Valley

A Google Earth Engine based satellite image classification approach for detecting lancover changes.

Publications

In Review

MURD-ViT: Multimodal Urban Retrofitting Detection Using Street View Imagery and Demographic Data
Bhattarai, R., Wang, S., Song, Y., Ma, X., Kang, Y., Michels, A., Lyu, F. (2026). In Review, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing (JSTARS).

In Preparation

VLM4UC: A VLM-Based Reasoning Framework for Urban Change Detection
Bhattarai, R., Lyu, F. (2026).
Retrofitting for Resilience: How Urban Interventions Influence Heat Exposure Across Space and Time
Lyu, F., Bhattarai, R. (2026).

Non-Peer Reviewed

Web enabled Utility Management System of Kathmandu University
Bhattarai, R., Dulal, S. S., Pandey, S., Shrestha, P. (2022). Research Gate. Read Paper
Regression Analysis of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to Compare Seasonal Patterns and Vegetation Trend of Nepal
Bhattarai, R., Dulal, S. S., Pandey, S., Shrestha, P. (2021). Research Gate. Read Paper

Awards

1st Place - I-GUIDE Spatial AI Challenge 2025–26
Secured first place (global competition) for MURD-ViT: Urban Retrofitting Detection with Vision Transformer, hosted on the NSF-supported I-GUIDE Platform; evaluated on technical rigor, reproducibility, FAIR data, and societal relevance (2026).
Selected Participant - I-GUIDE Summer School 2026
Competitively selected for a fully funded, NSF-supported week-long immersive research program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (July 13–17, 2026), focused on applying geospatial AI to real-world convergence science problems.
3rd Place - OGIS Symposium Graduate Award
Recognized for excellence in GIS and Remote Sensing Research in the graduate category (2026).
Certificate of Honor - Nepal Institution of Chartered Surveyors
Academic excellence award for being one of the top 3 Geomatics Engineering graduates across all universities in Nepal (2023).
Winner - 19th SuperMap GIS Contest
Winner in the Development category and Challenge Prize recipient in the Application Analysis category (2021).

Contact

You can contact me if you want to talk or collaborate to work with me about GIS, Remote Sensing or research on the geospatial domain.

Location:

Blacksburg, Virginia, USA

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