Confirmed Speakers
Day 1: AI for Climate Science
Bjorn Stevens
Director, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
Computing Climate Change — From Envelopes, to AI, to Exascale and Beyond
Bio
Bjorn Stevens was born in Augsburg, Germany, in 1966. He earned a Master of Science in electrical engineering from Iowa State University (USA) in 1990 and a PhD in atmospheric science from Colorado State University in 1996. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, and became a Humboldt fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, in 1998. In 1999, he joined the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 2003 and tenured professor in 2007. From 2000 to 2009, he was also an affiliate scientist at NCAR. Since 2008, he has been a director at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and a professor at the University of Hamburg.
Stevens is interested in how atmospheric water vapor and clouds shape climate, both globally and regionally. His research has identified ways in which clouds organize themselves, the varied processes that influence this organization, and how clouds couple to larger-scale circulation systems. His interests have led him to advance observational techniques and expand the frontiers of modeling to develop and test theories.
Robert Engle
Nobel Laureate, Co-Director, The Volatility and Risk Institiute, Professor Emeritus of Finance at New York University Stern School of Business
A Financial Approach to Climate Risk
Bio
Robert Engle, Professor Emeritus of Finance at New York University Stern School of Business, was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Economics for his research on the concept of autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH). He developed this method for statistical modeling of time-varying volatility and demonstrated that these techniques accurately capture the properties of many time series. Professor Engle shared the prize with Clive W. J. Granger of UCSD. Professor Engle is the Co-Director of the Volatility and Risk Institute at NYU Stern. In this role he has developed research tools to track risks in the global economy and make these publicly available on the V-LAB website. He is now actively investigating the risks from climate change and strategies for mitigation.
Steven Chu
Nobel Laureate, Professor of Physics, Molecular and Cellular Physiology, and Energy Science and Engineering, Stanford University
Challenges and Advances in Mitigating Climate Change and Building a Sustainable Future
Bio
Steven Chu is William Keenan Professor of Physics, Molecular and Cellular Physiology and Energy Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He received the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for laser cooling and trapping of atoms. Other contributions include the optical tweezers of biomolecules, precision atom interferometry and single molecule FRET of biomolecules. Current interests include molecular biology, ultrasound imaging, metal anode batteries and low-cost carbon capture. From 2009 – 2013, he was U.S. Secretary of Energy, where he began ARPA-E, the Energy Innovation Hubs, and was tasked by President Obama to help BP stop the Macondo Oil spill. Previously, he was Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford, where he initiated Bio-X that links physical and biological sciences with engineering and medicine. Prior to Stanford, he was a department head at Bell Laboratories, past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received an A.B. degree in mathematics and a B.S. degree in physics from the University of Rochester, a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, has 35 honorary degrees, and is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and 9 foreign academies.
Stan Posey
HPC Program Manager, ESM and CFD Domains, NVIDIA
Directions in Physics AI Models for Driving Earth System Digital Twins
Bio
Stan Posey joined NVIDIA in 2009 with more than 15 years of experience in the HPC industry. Mr. Posey began his career as an engineering analyst in applied HPC at the U.S. DOE Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and mechanical CAE consultant CD-adapco, and later in technical roles at system vendors CDC, Silicon Graphics and Panasas. At NVIDIA, Mr. Posey is a program manager who guides the company’s strategy and directions for the domains of Earth system science and computational fluid dynamics. Mr. Posey is a member of the AIAA who serves on the AIAA Computer Systems Technical Committee and serves on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Helmholtz AI Board. Mr. Posey graduated with B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tennessee Knoxville, USA.
Peter Dueben
Nobel Laureate, Co-Director, The Volatility and Risk Institiute, Professor Emeritus of Finance at New York University Stern School of Business
Machine Learning and Earth System Modelling
Bio
Peter is the Head of the Earth System Modelling Section at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) developing one of the world’s leading global weather forecast models — The Integrated Forecasting System (IFS). He is also a Honorary Professor at the University of Cologne. Before, he was AI and Machine Learning Coordinator at ECMWF and University Research Fellowship of the Royal Society performing research towards the use of machine learning, high-performance computing, and reduced numerical precision in weather and climate simulations. Peter is coordinator of the WeatherGenerator Horizon Europe project that aims to build a machine-learned foundation model for weather and climate applications and has been the coordinator of the MAELSTROM EuroHPC-Joint Undertaking project.
Torsten Hoefler
Professor Scalable Parallel Computing Lab, Computer Science Department, ETH Zurich
Accelerated Large-Scale Climate Simulations and the Potential for AI
Bio
Torsten Hoefler is a Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich, a member of Academia Europaea, and a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE, and ELLIS. He received the 2024 ACM Prize in Computing, one of the highest honors in the field. His research interests revolve around the central topic of "Performance-centric System Design" and include scalable networks, parallel programming techniques, and performance modeling. Torsten won best paper awards at the ACM/IEEE Supercomputing Conference SC10, SC13, SC14, SC19, SC22, SC23, SC24, HPDC'15, HPDC'16, IPDPS'15, and other conferences. He published hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific conference and journal articles and authored chapters of the MPI-2.2 and MPI-3.0 standards. He received the IEEE CS Sidney Fernbach Award, the ACM Gordon Bell Prize, the ISC Jack Dongarra award, the Latsis prize of ETH Zurich, as well as the German Max Planck-Humboldt Medal. Additional information about Torsten can be found on his homepage at htor.ethz.ch.
Parag Khanna
Founder & CEO, AlphaGeo
From Adaptation to Resilience
Bio
Dr. Parag Khanna is Founder & CEO of AlphaGeo, the leading AI-powered geospatial analytics platform. He is the internationally bestselling author of seven books including MOVE: Where People Are Going for a Better Future (2021), preceded by The Future is Asian: Commerce, Conflict & Culture in the 21st Century (2019), as well as a trilogy of books on the future of world order beginning with The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (2008), followed by How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance (2011), and concluding with Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization (2016). He is also the author of Technocracy in America: Rise of the Info-State (2017) and co-author of Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization (2012). Parag was named one of Esquire’s “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century,” and featured in WIRED magazine’s “Smart List.” He holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, and Bachelors and Masters degrees from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Born in India and raised in the UAE, New York, and Germany, he has traveled to more than 150 countries and is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.
Lucas Joppa
Nobel Laureate, Co-Director, The Volatility and Risk Institiute, Professor Emeritus of Finance at New York University Stern School of Business
AI for Earth
Bio
Dr. Lucas Joppa is a Senior Managing Director and Chief Sustainability Officer at Haveli, a technology-focused private equity firm where he oversees Haveli’s sustainability and AI strategy across its operations and investment opportunities, including the firm’s ambition to be Net Zero from Fund One, an effort that includes its portfolio companies. Previously, Lucas was Microsoft’s first Chief Environmental Scientist, and then first Chief Environmental Officer, leading the development and execution of the company’s sustainability strategy across its worldwide business including Microsoft’s historic carbon negative, water positive, and zero waste sustainability commitments, as well as the establishment of their AI for Earth initiative and development of their Planetary Computer platform. Lucas has been recognized as one the world’s most highly cited researchers and serves on the boards of global organizations dedicated to technology and environmental. Along with his Ph.D. in Ecology from Duke University, Lucas holds a B.S. in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Wisconsin.
Maria Loureiro
Professor of Economics, University of Santiago de Compostela
Climate Extremes and Economic Vulnerability: A Data-Driven Analysis for Spain
Bio
María Loureiro García is a Professor in the Department of Fundamentals of Economic Analysis at the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC). She is also the scientific director of the inter-university center ECOBAS, which includes the three Galician universities. Her research focuses on the economics of climate change and natural resources. She has published over 110 articles, with 94 indexed in the Web of Science, and is listed among the top 2% of the world's most influential scientists according to Stanford University. Additionally, she is an editor for the journal Ecological Economics and serves on the editorial board of several other scientific journals. María Loureiro has received several awards for her research career, including the Social Sciences Research Award from the Xunta de Galicia and the Valentín Paz Andrade Award from USC.
Adam Schlosser
Senior Research Scientist and Deputy Director, MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy
Advancing AI-Based Methods, Models, and Prediction for Sustainability Science and Transition Strategies: How Far Can We and Do We Need to Go?
Bio
Dr. C. Adam Schlosser is currently a Senior Research Scientist and Deputy Director at the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy. His primary interests are the modeling, prediction, and risk assessment of the natural, managed, and built water-energy-land systems. Dr. Schlosser has also undertaken studies of hydrology, weather, and climate and their predictability and limits-to-prediction. In doing so, he has worked with a wide range of numerical models, ranging from process-level to global-scale models, as well as observational data for evaluation and complementary analyses. He also has participated in and led international experiments aimed to assess the performance of Earth-system model components and predictions. Other collaborative research activities include extreme events; water-resource risk assessments to inform mitigation and adaptation strategies; biodiversity; global soil sinks of hydrogen, and renewable-energy resource and intermittency assessments.
Luca Brocca
Director of Research, National Research Council, Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection, Italy
Digital Twin Earth Hydrology Next: end-to-end reconstruction of the terrestrial water cycle at high resolution
Bio
Luca Brocca received the M.S. degree and the Ph.D. in Civil Engineering in 2003 and 2008 respectively. Since (2009) 2019 he is (Researcher) Director of Research at the National Research Council, Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection (CNR-IRPI) in Perugia. He is author and co-author of 200+ journal refereed papers (21000+ citations), 80+ papers in peer-reviewed conference proceedings/book chapters, and 10+ regional and global datasets. Luca Brocca is the head of the Hydrology Next Group at CNR-IRPI and he is involved as PI (and co-PI) in several projects funded by the European Commission and Space Agencies (ESA, EUMETSAT). Among others, in 2012, he received the “Early Career Research Excellence” award by iEMSs society, in 2018 he has been the winner of the Copernicus Masters competition “BayWa Smart Farming Challenge”, in 2019 and 2020 he has been nominated “Highly Cited Researchers” by Web of Science Group – Clarivate, and in 2021 he won the “ESA–EGU Earth Observation Excellence Award”. The main research interest of Luca Brocca lies in the development of innovative methods for exploiting satellite observations (soil moisture, rainfall, river discharge) for hydrological applications including floods, landslides, rainfall, droughts, irrigation, water resources management (e.g., SM2RAIN, irrigation from space), and he is recognized expert in digital twin technology for hydrology (DTE Hydrology).
Jack Dongarra
Research Professor Emeritus in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, Univeristy of Tennessee
High-Performance Computing and Responsibly Reckless Algorithms
Bio
Jack Dongarra specializes in numerical algorithms in linear algebra, parallel computing, the use of advanced computer architectures, programming methodology, and tools for parallel computers. He holds appointments at the University of Tennessee and the University of Manchester. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, ACM, IEEE, and SIAM; a foreign member of the British Royal Society and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. Most recently, he received the 2021 ACM A.M. Turing Award for his pioneering contributions to numerical algorithms and software that have driven decades of extraordinary progress in computing performance and applications.