AICE Speaker Series: V. Balaji (Schmidt Sciences)

Guest Speaker: V. Balaji , Distinguished Fellow and Climate Institute Lead, Schmidt Sciences

Agenda
3:00pm – 3:45pm:  Presentation
3:45pm – 4:00pm:  Q&A
4:00pm – 4:30pm: Reception

Data Science Institute
Room 105
5460 S University Ave, Chicago, IL 60615

Title: Climate models: where they came from, where they’re going, and why you should trust them

Abstract: An introduction to climate models, their history and evolution, and their central role today in climate research and climate policy. From early days, the models have added a dizzying amount of detail, and remain our one method of getting data from the future of our planet, and from counterfactual planets. But the evolution of computing technology is bringing forth new methods borrowed from machine learning and artificial intelligence, which pose fundamental questions about the next generation of models: in particular, how we navigate the transition from simulation to emulation.

Bio: V. Balaji joined Schmidt Sciences as Distinguished Fellow in June 2022, fresh from a 25 year career in Princeton University, during which time he served as head of the Modeling Systems Division at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, one of the world’s pioneers in climate modeling, from 2003-2021. In 2017 he was among the first recipients of President Macron’s Make Our Planet Great Again award and through that has an academic appointment at the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace in Sorbonne Universités. He has served on US National Academies panels related to climate, computing, and geophysical data, and has been on scientific advisory boards to several US agencies and climate research institutions across the world, including currently to the UK Met Office. In 2025 he was appointed Distinguished Associate of Darwin College, Cambridge University.

He is interested in, in short, everything: but more narrowly, to the application of advanced science and technology to pressing problems of planetary scale, and widening access to these advances among underserved communities and in the developing world. At Schmidt Sciences, he leads climate initiatives to build a framework for analyzing pathways toward a carbon- and resource-neutral future through linked programs on climate modeling, land and ocean carbon, global freshwater, and energy planning with an eye to the Global South.

Balaji holds a PhD in Physics from the Ohio State University and a Masters in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.