Lost Science is an ongoing series of accounts from scientists who have lost their jobs or funding after cuts by the Trump administration. The conversations have been edited for clarity and length. Here’s why we’re doing this. Amy McGovern: I like to tell people I was doing A.I. before A.I. was cool.
But really, I always knew I wanted to use artificial intelligence to make a difference in the real world. Back in 2005, when I first moved to Oklahoma and became a professor, I began studying how A.I. could be used to improve weather forecasts. Specifically, my research tries to improve predictions about extreme weather, like hurricanes, heat waves and snowstorms. It’s a really hard problem that goes beyond whether or not you need to bring a coat or an umbrella today.
It’s about whether or not you should evacuate from a tornado coming down your street in the next five minutes or the next 15 minutes. These are very high-stakes decision-making moments with a lot of uncertainty. But it’s a perfect problem for A.I. because there is a lot of weather data out there, and data is what A.I. is really good at making sense of. It reveals patterns that humans aren’t able to see and finds useful connections between different weather models.
In the last 20 years, what we can do with A.I. and forecasts has substantially changed. Now A.I. is actually informing forecasts made by government agencies and private sector companies, like the Weather Company, and the results are showing up on people’s phones. In 2019, I and my collaborators were awarded a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation to start an A.I. institute dedicated to weather forecasting. The funding supported 24 faculty members, 35 researchers, 46 graduate students and 83 undergraduates.
It’s the kind of work you can’t do with smaller, more typical grants. Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
