PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Mike Pritchard

Mike Pritchard is a climate scientist who uses machine learning to improve climate and weather simulation. As a doctoral candidate at Scripps, he studied why multi-model framework climate models missed organized storms near the Rocky Mountains. He joined NVIDIA Research as Director of Climate Simulation Research in 2022 and coauthored ClimSim, a multi-scale dataset for hybrid physics-ML climate research that won a NeurIPS Outstanding Paper award in 2023. In December 2025, he coauthored Long-Range Distillation, a conference paper about distilling 10,000 years of simulated climate into long-timestep AI weather models; as of October 2026, he leads NVIDIA’s Climate and Weather Simulation Research Lab.

Now at
NVIDIA
Badges

Timeline

  1. 2011

    Storms in climate models

    As a doctoral candidate at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, he studies in 2011 why multi-model framework climate models miss organized storms near the Rocky Mountains.

  2. 2022

    Director of climate simulation research

    In 2022, he joins NVIDIA Research as Director of Climate Simulation Research.

  3. 2023

    ClimSim wins at NeurIPS

    He coauthors ClimSim, a multi-scale dataset designed for hybrid machine-learning and physics climate research. NeurIPS gives the paper an Outstanding Paper award in 2023.

  4. December 2025

    Long-range climate distillation

    In December 2025, he coauthors Long-Range Distillation, a conference paper about distilling 10,000 years of simulated climate into long-timestep AI weather models.

  5. As of October 2026

    NVIDIA climate lab leadership

    As of October 2026, he leads NVIDIA’s Climate and Weather Simulation Research Lab, founded in 2022. His team develops AI for hybrid physics-AI climate simulation and Earth System prediction.

Career

  1. Since 2022NVIDIADirector of Climate Simulation Research

Education

  1. From 2011University of California, San DiegoPhD

From the biography.

  1. 16% of AI career moves in the 2020s went from a university to a companyIncludes Mike Pritchard. We estimate that 16% of AI career moves in the 2020s went from a university to a company; 29% of moves starting at a university went to a company, and 76% ended the university role.
  2. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes NVIDIA. 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.
  3. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes NVIDIA. We estimate that 539 of the 6,766 people with a known current organization (8%) hold both a university role and a company role, including 20% of people at companies and 13% of people at universities.
  4. Google alumni have founded or led 133 other organizations, more than any other AI labIncludes NVIDIA. We estimate that alumni of 17 major AI labs went on to found or lead 350 other organizations, including 226 they founded, and we trace 472 career moves directly between 23 labs since 2010.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

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

  1. An Imperfect Storm scripps.ucsd.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. CSE Distinguished Seminar | Mike Pritchard cse.mit.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. ClimSim: A large multi-scale dataset for hybrid physics-ML climate emulation papers.neurips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. NeurIPS 2023 Awards neurips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Long-Range Distillation: Distilling 10,000 Years of Simulated Climate into Long Timestep AI Weather Models research.nvidia.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. NVIDIA Climate and Weather Research research.nvidia.com. Checked 21 October 2026.