PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Liran Peng

Liran Peng is a climate scientist at the University of California, Irvine, whose work links high-resolution cloud modeling with machine learning for climate simulation. A Nanjing University graduate in 2008, they earned an M.S. in cloud microphysics at the University of Wyoming in 2013 and a Ph.D. in Arctic climate change at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2019. At UC Irvine, where they were a postdoctoral associate from 2020 to 2023, they coauthored ClimSim, a dataset of 5.7 billion input and output pairs for hybrid physics-ML climate emulation that received an Outstanding Paper award at NeurIPS in 2023. In 2025, they coauthored a paper on the results of the ClimSim Kaggle competition. They are an Assistant Project Scientist in the Department of Earth System Sciences at UC Irvine.

Timeline

  1. 2008–2019

    Degrees from Nanjing to Alaska

    They earn a bachelor's degree at Nanjing University in 2008 and an M.S. in cloud microphysics at the University of Wyoming in 2013. In 2019, they complete a Ph.D. in Arctic climate change at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

  2. 2016–2018

    Araon Arctic Ocean expeditions

    Between 2016 and 2018, they take part in three Arctic Ocean expeditions aboard the research vessel Araon.

  3. 2020–2023

    Postdoc at UC Irvine

    From 2020 to 2023, they work as a postdoctoral associate at UC Irvine.

  4. 2023

    ClimSim wins at NeurIPS

    They are a coauthor of ClimSim, a dataset of 5.7 billion pairs of multivariate input and output vectors for hybrid physics-ML climate emulation. The paper receives an Outstanding Paper award at NeurIPS in 2023.

  5. 2023

    Stratocumulus in a 200-m model

    In 2023, they are first author of a paper with Peter Blossey, Walter Hannah, Christopher Bretherton, Michael Pritchard and others. It shows that hyperviscosity and cloud droplet sedimentation partly offset the stratocumulus dim bias in a 200-m resolution multi-scale modeling framework.

  6. 2024

    Climate-invariant machine learning

    In 2024, Science Advances publishes "Climate-invariant machine learning," which they coauthor with Tom Beucler, Pierre Gentine, Michael Pritchard and others. The paper incorporates knowledge of climate processes into ML algorithms, which maintain high offline accuracy across a wide range of climate conditions in three atmospheric models.

  7. November 2025

    The ClimSim Kaggle competition

    In November 2025, they coauthor a paper with Jerry Lin, Tom Beucler, Mike Pritchard and others on the downstream results of the ClimSim Kaggle competition. It couples emulators inspired by the winning teams' architectures to an interactive climate model and evaluates their online performance.

  8. As of October 2026

    Assistant Project Scientist at UCI

    They are an Assistant Project Scientist in the Department of Earth System Sciences at UC Irvine. They work with Mike Pritchard to develop and apply a multiscale modeling framework for climate science.

Career

  1. Since 2020University of California, IrvinePostdoctoral associate

Education

  1. 2019University of Alaska FairbanksPh.D.
  2. 2013University of WyomingM.S.
  3. 2008Nanjing UniversityBachelor's degree

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 Liran Peng. 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. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes University of California, Irvine. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University of California, Irvine. 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.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes University of California, Irvine. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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

  1. Liran Peng scholarconnect.uci.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. NeurIPS 2023 Awards neurips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. ClimSim-Online: A Large Multi-scale Dataset and Framework for Hybrid ML-physics Climate Emulation arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Improving stratocumulus cloud amounts in a 200-m resolution multi-scale modeling framework through tuning of its interior physics arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Climate-Invariant Machine Learning arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Crowdsourcing the Frontier: Advancing Hybrid Physics-ML Climate Simulation via a $50,000 Kaggle Competition arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Welcome to Liran's website! liranpeng.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.