PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Charles Stern

Charles Stern is a software engineer whose work connects cloud data systems with machine-learning research for climate science. He worked on Pangeo Forge at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in 2021 and coauthored three 2022 papers on the platform, snow albedo and cloud-based ocean-model comparison. In 2023, he coauthored ClimSim, a global climate-emulation dataset with 5.7 billion pairs of multivariate input and output vectors for hybrid machine-learning and physics simulations; the paper won a NeurIPS Outstanding Paper award. As of October 2026, he is an Ai2 software engineer leading backend and distributed data processing systems design for Ecoscope on the EarthRanger team.

Timeline

  1. August 2021

    Pangeo Forge at Lamont-Doherty

    At CloudBank's RRoCCET21 conference in August 2021, he presents a live demonstration of analysis-ready data while working as a data infrastructure engineer in Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory's Ocean Transport Group. His work focuses on Pangeo Forge, which extracts data from traditional repositories and deposits it in cloud object storage in analysis-ready, cloud-optimized form.

  2. February 2022

    A Pangeo Forge paper

    In February 2022, he coauthors a Frontiers in Climate paper about Pangeo Forge, a community-driven platform for producing analysis-ready, cloud-optimized ocean, weather and climate data stores. He drafts the manuscript with contributions from all other authors, and all authors contribute to Pangeo Forge's design and implementation.

  3. May 2022

    Snow albedo and remote sensing

    In May 2022, he coauthors a study of apparent and intrinsic snow albedo over a season at a sub-alpine site, with implications for remote sensing.

  4. July 2022

    Cloud-based ocean-model comparison

    In July 2022, he coauthors a paper presenting a cloud-based framework to compare realistic, submesoscale-permitting ocean models.

  5. 2023

    ClimSim dataset and award

    In 2023, he coauthors ClimSim, a global climate dataset with 5.7 billion pairs of multivariate input and output vectors designed for hybrid machine-learning and physics research. NeurIPS names the paper an Outstanding Paper in the Datasets and Benchmarks track.

  6. 2025

    Sub-grid heat flux in climate models

    In 2025, he coauthors a Geophysical Research Letters paper on how sub-grid heterogeneity affects air-sea turbulent heat flux in coupled climate models.

  7. As of October 2026

    Ecoscope systems at Ai2

    As of October 2026, he is a software engineer at Ai2 who leads backend and distributed data processing systems design for Ecoscope on the EarthRanger team.

Career

  1. NowAllen Institute for AI (Ai2)Software engineer
  2. From 2021Columbia UniversityData infrastructure engineer

From the biography.

  1. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Allen Institute for AI (Ai2). We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  2. Companies supply the most prior-work hires at 7 of the 9 frontier AI labsIncludes Allen Institute for AI (Ai2). Our estimates of the organizations where 550 people worked directly before joining 9 frontier AI labs across 620 career transitions, comparing the main feeder organizations per lab.
  3. 72% of AI researchers with top works connect into a single 2,592-person co-author groupIncludes Allen Institute for AI (Ai2). We map the co-author network across 3,593 people shaping AI and 14,977 most-cited papers: 2,592 (72%) form one connected group with a median distance of 5 steps, led in 2-step reach by Yoshua Bengio (570) and in shortest-path bridging by Yoshua Bengio (6.7%).
  4. Direct Form 990 pay in the latest returns of 39 nonprofits with AI people on this site is highest at $2.1M at the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) (2024)Includes Allen Institute for AI (Ai2). IRS Form 990 compensation across 39 nonprofits with AI people on this site from 2012 to 2025: in the latest returns, Mozilla reports $6.1M including related-company pay (2024) and the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) leads direct nonprofit pay at $2.1M (2024).

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Charles Stern yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. RRoCCET21: Analysis Ready Data in the Cloud | CloudBank cloudbank.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Frontiers | Pangeo Forge: Crowdsourcing Analysis-Ready, Cloud Optimized Data Production frontiersin.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. TC - Divergence of apparent and intrinsic snow albedo over a season at a sub-alpine site with implications for remote sensing tc.copernicus.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. GMD - Cloud-based framework for inter-comparing submesoscale-permitting realistic ocean models gmd.copernicus.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. ClimSim: A large multi-scale dataset for hybrid physics-ML climate emulation proceedings.neurips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. NeurIPS 2023 Awards neurips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Publications | Charles Stern cisaacstern.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Charles Stern | I am a software engineer specializing in Python and cloud-native earth science. cisaacstern.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.