PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Pierre Gentine

Pierre Gentine is a Columbia University professor who works to bring machine learning into climate models. After studying at SupAéro in Toulouse, he earned an MSc in 2006 and a PhD in 2010 in civil and environmental engineering at MIT, joined Columbia Engineering in 2010, and received the 2022 Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union. In 2021, he became director of LEAP, a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center funded with $25 million over five years to merge physical modeling with machine learning, and he is among the authors of ClimSim, a climate-emulation dataset that won an Outstanding Datasets and Benchmarks Paper award at NeurIPS 2023. He is director of LEAP and a professor of geophysics at Columbia.

Now at
Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science and Columbia University

Timeline

  1. 2006–2010

    Degrees at SupAéro and MIT

    He holds an undergraduate degree in applied mathematics from SupAéro, the French National Aeronautical and Space Engineering School in Toulouse. At MIT, he earns an MSc in 2006 and a PhD in 2010 in civil and environmental engineering.

  2. 2010–2017

    Joining Columbia Engineering

    He joins the faculty of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Applied Physics at Columbia Engineering in 2010. He is an assistant professor of Earth and Environmental Engineering from 2011 and a tenured associate professor from 2017.

  3. 2014–2019

    Early-career and ERC Synergy awards

    He receives the NASA New Investigator Program award in 2014, the Department of Energy Early Career award in 2015 and the NSF CAREER award in 2016. In 2017, the American Geophysical Union gives him its Global Environmental Change Early Career Award and the American Meteorological Society its Clarence Meisinger Award, and in 2019 he wins a European Research Council Synergy Award.

  4. 2021

    Launching LEAP at Columbia

    A $25 million, five-year grant from the National Science Foundation launches the Science and Technology Center Learning the Earth with Artificial Intelligence and Physics (LEAP) at Columbia in 2021, and he becomes its director. The Humboldt Foundation selects him for a professorship at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and he stays at Columbia to lead the center. LEAP's strategy is to improve near-term climate projections by merging physical modeling with machine learning.

  5. 2022

    The Macelwane Medal

    The American Geophysical Union names him the 2022 James B. Macelwane Medal recipient for significant contributions to Earth and space science. His research uses multi-scale modeling and big data such as machine learning, remote sensing and high-resolution turbulent simulations to study the continental hydrologic cycle.

  6. 2023

    ClimSim wins at NeurIPS

    In 2023, ClimSim, a dataset of 5.7 billion pairs of input and output vectors for hybrid ML-physics climate research, wins an Outstanding Datasets and Benchmarks Paper award at NeurIPS. He is one of its authors, in a consortium of climate scientists and machine learning researchers.

  7. 2024

    Machine learning in climate modelling

    He is third author, after Veronika Eyring and William D. Collins, of 'Pushing the Frontiers in Climate Modelling and Analysis with Machine Learning', published in Nature Climate Change in 2024. In a September 2024 essay for Columbia's State of the Planet, he writes that AI helps narrow the uncertainties in climate modeling and calls for open data, codes and models.

  8. As of October 2026

    Director of LEAP

    He is director of LEAP and Maurice Ewing and J. Lamar Worzel Professor of Geophysics in Columbia University's Departments of Earth and Environmental Engineering and Earth and Environmental Sciences.

Career

  1. Since 2021Columbia UniversityMaurice Ewing and J. Lamar Worzel Professor of Geophysics
  2. Since 2010Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied ScienceFaculty member, Assistant professor

Education

  1. 2010Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPhD
  2. 2006Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyMSc
  3. French National Aeronautical and Space Engineering SchoolUndergraduate degree in applied mathematics

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 Pierre Gentine. 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. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Columbia University. 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.
  3. Nonprofit roles are 2.3 times as common in AI safetyIncludes Columbia University. We estimate where people focused on safety, alignment and evaluation work. Nonprofit roles appear for 25.1% of safety people with known affiliations, compared with 11.0% in other areas.
  4. Universities had a net outflow of 2,068 moves in AI careersIncludes Columbia University. Our estimates of career flows and median h-index across universities and companies in AI, including the role of joint appointments and earlier academic jobs.

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 Pierre Gentine yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Pierre Gentine | Earth and Environmental Engineering eee-seas.ias-drupal7-content.cc.columbia.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. Columbia Engineering, Arts and Sciences, and Columbia Climate School to Launch $25M Climate Modeling Center eee-seas.ias-drupal7-content.cc.columbia.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. Neue Alexander von Humboldt-Professor*innen ausgewählt idw-online.de. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. A Leap Toward a Sustainable Earth: Q+A with Climate Expert Pierre Gentine news.climate.columbia.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. Pierre Gentine Named Macelwane Medal Winner eee-seas.ias-drupal7-content.cc.columbia.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. Congratulations to the 2022 AGU Union Medal, Award, and Prize Recipients eos.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. Announcing the NeurIPS 2023 Paper Awards blog.neurips.cc. Checked 22 October 2026.
  8. ClimSim-Online: A Large Multi-scale Dataset and Framework for Hybrid ML-physics Climate Emulation arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  9. Pushing the Frontiers in Climate Modelling and Analysis with Machine Learning research.nvidia.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  10. Can AI Help Save Our Planet? news.climate.columbia.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  11. Executive Committee + Staff - LEAP leap.columbia.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.