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. 

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