Kuehnast Lecture featuring Elizabeth Barnes

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The 32nd Kuehnast Lecture will take place at 3-4:30 PM on Thursday, October 2, 2025. We will welcome distinguished guest Dr. Elizabeth Barnes, Incoming Dalton Family Chair in Environmental Data Science & Sustainability and Professor of Computing & Data Sciences and of Earth & Environment at Boston University. The lecture will be held in the Cargill Seminar Room on the University of MN's St. Paul Campus. Light refreshments will be served after the lecture in the Cargill Atrium.

Explainable AI for Earth System Prediction: From Black Box to Window into the Future

The coupled, complex nature of the Earth system makes it incredibly challenging to predict. Progress in this area requires integrating diverse approaches, from physics-based climate models to deep learning emulators. In this presentation, Dr. Barnes will discuss her team's progress in developing and applying artificial intelligence (AI) tools to enhance Earth system prediction across time and space. These tools are designed to emulate scientific reasoning, improving intrinsic interpretability and predictive capabilities. Dr. Barnes will demonstrate how integrating domain knowledge with AI methods and thoughtful model development can make these tools more transparent and useful to the scientists using them.