Joaquin Gajardo

PhD Student at ETH Zürich

I am a PhD candidate at ETH Zürich specializing in 3D computer vision and generative AI with applications to agriculture. My research focuses on semantic 3D and 4D reconstruction of plant growth to support precision agriculture and crop breeding in the context of climate change. Previously, I worked as a Data Scientist at Empa on AI for Earth Observation, numerical simulation and mobile app development. I received my MSc from EPFL and my BSc and Engineer title from PUC Chile (top-ranked in Latin America).

Gaussian Splatting Neural Fields Diffusion Models Scene Understanding 3D reconstruction Neural Networks Python PyTorch Docker

Education

Ph.D. candidate in Computer and Agricultural Sciences

ETH Zürich, Switzerland

2023 - Present

M.Sc. in Environmental Sciences and Engineering

EPFL, Switzerland

2018 - 2021

⭐ Thesis on Neural Controlled Differential Equations awarded the CSD Ingénieurs Prize.

B.Sc. and Professional Engineer in Industrial Engineering

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile

2012 - 2017

⭐ Maximum grade on final degree exam.

Experience

Data Scientist

Empa – Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Switzerland

2021 - 2023

Technical lead of the Your Virtual Cold Chain Assistant project (helped secure initial funding for $1M), collaborating with BASE on the design, development and testing of a mobile app for cold chain optimization in developing countries. Conducted applied research on large-scale agriculture mapping using satellite imagery and deep learning. Supervised data science interns and managed GPU infrastructure.

Intern

Empa – Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Switzerland

2020

Developed a 3D digital twin software in Python for real-time food quality prediction in cold storage, implementing custom numerical PDE/ODE solvers for physics-based thermal transport modeling. The software was built for and deployed by an industrial partner.

Publications

Wheat3DGS: In-field 3D Reconstruction, Instance Segmentation and Phenotyping of Wheat Heads with Gaussian Splatting

Daiwei Zhang*, Joaquin Gajardo* Tomislav Medic, Isinsu Katircioglu, Mike Boss, Norbert Kirchgessner, Achim Walter, Lukas Roth

Proceedings of the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR) Workshops 2025

* Shared first autorship

project page paper arXiv code

Evaluating the role of training data origin for country-scale cropland mapping in data-scarce regions: A case study of Nigeria

Joaquin Gajardo, Michele Volpi, Daniel Onwude, Thijs Defraeye

ISPRS Open Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 2025

paper arXiv code demo

Projects

Coldtivate

Empa

2021-2023

Led the design and development of an open-source AI- and simulation-powered mobile application at Empa to optimize cold chain logistics for perishable goods, enhancing efficiency and reducing waste in supply chains.

project page video article poster code

MSc thesis

Exchange semester at ETH Zürich, PRS lab (Ecovision)

2020-2021

Neural Controlled Differential Equations for crop classification on time series of satellite images. Proposed a new stacked architecture and earned CSD Ingénieurs price.

thesis code

Supervised Students

Claudio Abart — MSc Thesis, ETH Zürich, 2025

Daiwei Zhang — MSc Semester Project, ETH Zürich, 2024

Sélène Ledain — Internship (EPFL MSc student), Empa, 2022

Danya Li — Internship (EPFL MSc student), Empa, 2021