PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

J. David Neelin

Also known as David Neelin

J. David Neelin is a UCLA climate scientist who studies how the ocean, the atmosphere and tropical convection interact, and he co-authored ClimSim, a dataset for hybrid physics and machine-learning climate emulation that received a NeurIPS Outstanding Paper award in 2023. After a Princeton doctorate in 1987, he joined the UCLA faculty in 1988, became a professor in 1995 and chaired the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences from 2010 to 2013. His textbook Climate Change and Climate Modeling appeared from Cambridge University Press in 2011, and his honours include fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada in 2015, the American Geophysical Union's Bert Bolin Global Environmental Change Award in 2017 and the American Meteorological Society's Charney Medal in 2019. He is a Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UCLA, where he leads the Climate Systems Interactions group.

Born
1959
Badges

Years link to their sources.

Timeline

  1. 1981–1988

    Physics degrees and a Princeton doctorate

    A bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Toronto in 1981 and a master's degree in 1983 lead to a doctorate in Princeton's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Program in 1987. From 1987 to 1988, he is a postdoctoral associate in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.

  2. 1988–2013

    UCLA faculty and department chair

    He joins UCLA's Department of Atmospheric Sciences as an assistant professor in 1988, becomes an associate professor in 1992 and a professor in 1995. As a Guggenheim Fellow in 2008, he is a scientific visitor at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and from 2010 to 2013 he chairs the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.

  3. 2011

    A climate modeling textbook

    Cambridge University Press publishes his 282-page textbook Climate Change and Climate Modeling in 2011. The book wins a Choice Outstanding Academic Title award.

  4. 2015–2017

    Royal Society fellowship and Bolin Award

    The Royal Society of Canada elects him a Fellow in 2015 for his work on atmosphere-ocean interaction and the mechanisms behind the El Niño/Southern Oscillation. In 2016, he becomes a Distinguished Professor in UCLA's Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and in 2017 he receives the American Geophysical Union's Bert Bolin Global Environmental Change Award.

  5. 2018

    NOAA Model Diagnostics Task Force

    In 2018, he begins chairing the NOAA Model Diagnostics Task Force. He leads a multi-institutional project, funded by a $1.63 million grant from NOAA Research's MAPP Program, to build a one-stop set of diagnostic tools that streamline how scientists improve their weather and climate models.

  6. 2019

    The Charney Medal

    In 2019, the American Meteorological Society awards him the Jule G. Charney Medal for fundamental contributions to understanding tropical climate dynamics and the impact of anthropogenic forcing on precipitation, drying, circulation, and extremes.

  7. 2023

    ClimSim wins at NeurIPS

    ClimSim, a dataset for hybrid physics and machine-learning climate emulation, receives an Outstanding Paper award at NeurIPS in 2023, and he is one of its authors. It holds 5.7 billion pairs of multivariate input and output vectors from multi-scale climate simulations, and the data and code are released openly.

  8. As of October 2026

    Leading the Climate Systems Interactions group

    He is a Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UCLA and leads the Climate Systems Interactions group, which builds a hierarchy of climate models of successively less complexity. His research starts from ocean-atmosphere interaction and includes the interaction between the large-scale tropical atmosphere and moist convection. Since 2022, he is also a Deputy Editor of Science Advances.

Career

  1. Since 1988University of California, Los AngelesAssistant Professor, Associate Professor
  2. From 2018United States Department of CommerceChair
  3. 2008National Center for Atmospheric ResearchScientific Visitor
  4. 1987–1988Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPostdoctoral Associate

Education

  1. 1987Princeton UniversityDoctorate
  2. 1983University of TorontoMaster's degree
  3. 1981University of TorontoBachelor's degree in physics

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes J. David Neelin. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. Of 216 AI researchers who entered public life, 83 held advisory seats and 58 took public rolesIncludes J. David Neelin. Of 216 AI researchers who entered public life, 83 held advisory seats and 58 took public roles. Another 97 people moved from public careers into AI organizations or research, with 62% of dated records starting from 2020 on.
  3. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes University of California, Los Angeles. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  4. Universities keep AI researchers for a median of 6 years, compared with 2 years at frontier labsIncludes University of California, Los Angeles. Across 15,811 dated work stays (6,529 people), median role tenure runs from 6 years at universities to 2 years at frontier labs. We compare all five organization types, starting decades from the 1970s to the 2020s, and the organizations that keep people longest.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of J. David Neelin yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Professor J. David Neelin – Neelin Group atmos.ucla.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Climate Change and Climate Modeling cambridge.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Professor David Neelin Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada atmos.ucla.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. David Neelin Awarded with the Bert Bolin Global Environmental Change Award atmos.ucla.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. David Neelin- UCLA Newsroom ioes.ucla.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Jule G. Charney Award - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. ClimSim: A large multi-scale dataset for hybrid physics-ML climate emulation proceedings.neurips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. NeurIPS 2023 Awards neurips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Neelin Group – Climate Systems Interactions atmos.ucla.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.