NASA’s science efforts aim to empower scientists with the tools to perform research into our planet and universe. To this end, a collaborative effort between NASA and IBM created an AI geospatial foundation model, which was released as an open-source application in 2024.
Trained on vast amounts of NASA Earth science data, the foundation model can be adapted for Earth science applications such as flood, burn scar, and cropland studies. Tailoring the model for a specific task takes far less data than the original training set, providing an easy path for researchers to perform AI-powered studies.
For their groundbreaking work on this project, the development team behind the foundation model has received the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Group Achievement Award. Their success with the model showcases their commitment to advancing AI and scientific research and will inspire progress in this field for years to come.
The team members from NASA’s Marshall Space Fight Center /IMPACT (Interagency Implementation and Advanced Concepts Team) are:
- Rahul Ramachandran
- Manil Maskey
- Elizabeth Fancher
The team members from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) are:
- Sujit Roy
- Ankur Kumar
- Christopher Phillips
- Iksha Gurung
- Muthukumaran Ramasubramanian
The team members from IBM are:
- Ranjini Bangalore
- Juan Bernabe-Moreno
- Dario Augusto Borges Oliveira
- Linsong Chu
- Blair Edwards
- Paolo Fraccaro
- Carlos Gomes
- Raghu Ganti
- Adnan Hoque
- Johannes Jakubik
- Levente Klein
- Devyani Lambhate
- Gabby Nyirjesy
- Naomi Simumba
- Johannes Schmude
- Mudhakar Srivatsa
- Harini Srinivasan
- Daniela Szwarcman
- Rob Parkin
- Kommy Weldemariam
- Campbell Watson
- Bianca Zadrozny
The team members from Clark University are:
- Hamed Alemohammad
- Michael Cecil
- Steve Li
- Sam Khallaghi
- Denys Godwin
- Maryam Ahmadi
- Fatemeh Kordi
To learn more about the NASA projects improving accessible science discovery for the benefit of all, visit the Open Science at NASA page.