July 12, 2023

Present

Geoffrey Fox, Gregg Barrett, Juri Papay, Wesley Brewer, Piotr Luszczek, Tom Gibbs, Christine Kirkpatrick, Murali Emani, Yuhan (Douglas) Rao

Tentative Agenda

Any new members
Official Plans https://docs.google.com/document/d/1joVz0uPeGNu9CqnZo9JmkAw8nGU8wCfhZC6UjOTDxSc/edit?pli=1 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VvFx1WcxkrJNbuwbrP3lEmh-Q9LbFjlRo8zpOBsLVxw/edit#gid=0
Future Directions: Foundation/Generative Models?
Using Benchmarking Data to Inform Decisions Related to Machine Learning Resource Efficiency (Continued) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gOKA8BnlJnsTAELWFSmL7Fl7kJej_UrNH-FVXbZFxGI/edit?usp=sharing
Benchmark Carpentry https://docs.google.com/document/d/15YIlAWOBA2_xjXkTnAZmaw003Jh4eqURVZYQHhdGYdQ/edit#heading=h.fa0u4qc1plw5
AI Readiness of MLCommons Science (Continued) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NbL-VdkrY9jzPxveOys2RCK8TdEJ7O5wgnxjAgzK-rE/edit?usp=sharing
AOB

New Member

Yuhan (Douglas) Rao is from the North Carolina State University’s North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies (NCICS) in Asheville. His current research at NCICS focuses on generating a blended near-surface air temperature dataset by integrating in situ measurements and satellite observations via innovative statistical models. He is familiar with climate and weather foundation models.

Official Plans

Foundation Models

Geoffrey gave a short presentation AI4Science Foundation Models noting possible different scopes for foundation models.
Yuhan noted that there is a recent established collaboration between NASA and IBM on foundational model with satellite image - https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/news/nasa-ibm-ai-collaboration
Wes noted that much big data has a low fraction of interesting data
Gregg put forward AlphaFold as a foundation model for science.
Yuhan noted Special issue – Benchmark datasets and machine learning algorithms for Earth system science data (ESSD/GMD inter-journal SI)
Also, we have our next NOAA AI Workshop (virtual) in September with focused discussion on benchmarking framework (5th NOAA AI Workshop (2023) | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
Christine suggested linking to NSF Initiative in knowledge graphs led by Chaitan Baru. who is a Senior Advisor in NSF's new Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP)
Christine asked if we could apply to the GEO POSE? Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) | NSF - National Science Foundation
Gregg Barrett noted that Feiyi Wang and Jeyan Thiyagalingam are hosting submissions on Foundational Models and Workflows in AI for Science | Frontiers Research Topic
If we have an initiative in Foundation models we need define a framework and have some prototypes – possibly small

Any Other Business

Gregg suggested a presentation at AI for Scientific Discovery: From Theory to Practice at NeurIPS 2023. Christine supported this