Recent announcements and highlights related to research, awards, leadership activities, and major initiatives led by Vipin Kumar.
March 16, 2026
Two new studies from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities show that machine-learning can improve the prediction of floods. "The knowledge-guided approach allows the model to learn from real-world data while still respecting the fundamental laws of hydrology,” said Vipin Kumar, Regents Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and a senior author on the papers. “This is not just about improving statistical accuracy. It is about providing reliable, actionable forecasts that emergency managers and forecasters can trust when making high-stakes decisions. CSE. Articles: Regionalization in a Global Hydrologic Deep Learning Model: From Physical Descriptors to Random Vectors; Hierarchically Disentangled Recurrent Network for Factorizing System Dynamics of Multi-scale Systems: An application on Hydrological Systems
February 2026
University of Minnesota Twin Cities computer science and engineering Regents Professor Vipin Kumar has been named to the United Nations (UN) Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence, the first global scientific body dedicated entirely to artificial intelligence and established by the UN General Assembly. The panel’s role is to provide independent, evidence-based assessments of artificial intelligence (AI) and to inform global understanding of its opportunities, risks and societal impacts. It will serve as the UN’s authoritative scientific voice on AI. Kumar, who is also director of CSE DSI, is one of two representatives from the US. CSE, Yahoo! News, UN, AP, ABC News
January 20, 2026
Vipin Kumar, Regents Professor, William Norris Land Grant Chair in Large-Scale Computing, and Director of the CSE Data Science Initiative, is one of six new members of the AI Index Steering Committee at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI). This interdisciplinary group of experts from across academia and industry that leads the Institute's annual AI Index Report. Produced annually by Stanford HAI, the AI Index Report offers one of the most comprehensive, data-driven views of artificial intelligence. Stanford University HAI
September 23, 2025
The Department of Computer Science & Engineering (CS&E) hosted a new program this summer led by professor Vipin Kumar and administered by lecturer and research associate Eman Ramadan. AI for Earth Summer School is an eight-week program that introduces the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) research to students from across the country. This program aims to apply AI/ML research to help address environmental challenges, providing hands-on machine learning experience in the process. CS&E
August 27, 2025
Prof. Vipin Kumar, a Regents Professor at the University of Minnesota, was awarded the 2025 Taylor L. Booth Education Award. He was interviewed on his wide-ranging research interests that touch on several fields that have significant impact worldwide. Additional topics include his leadership as an educator in computer science and his authorship of foundational textbooks have shaped data mining and parallel computing curricula internationally. This in-depth interview also covers the technologies he has had a hand in developing and how currently developing technology can help to solve world crises. IEEE Computer Society Tech News
May 2025
Department of Computer Science & Engineering alumnus Jeff Dean (CSci, ‘90) returned to the University of Minnesota this spring to give the keynote address at the College of Science and Engineering (CSE) Undergraduate Commencement. Dean is Google’s Chief Scientist, focusing on AI advances for Google DeepMind and Google Research. Dean gave a special seminar for CS&E students and faculty entitled “Modern Advances in Machine Learning and What Will They Enable?”. Dean shared many insights on the convergence of algorithmic research advances and large-scale computing systems that have enabled the rise of modern AI. CSE DSI
2025
The University of Minnesota aims to lead into the future in AI. “If you’re not a leader in this field, you will lose relevance pretty soon,” says CSE Data Science Initiative Director, Regents Professor, and William Norris Land Grant Chair in Large-Scale Computing Vipin Kumar. “You need to be the ones pushing the boundaries and frontiers of knowledge. If you’re not, it’s going to be hard to call yourself a major research institution. So it’s absolutely critical for us to be at the top.” UMN Twin Cities News
January 2025
CSE Data Science Initiative Director and Department of Computer Science & Engineering (CS&E) Regents Professor Vipin Kumar has been awarded the 2025 IEEE Computer Society Taylor L. Booth Education Award. Kumar was selected for his contributions to computational science and engineering through his foundational textbooks, outstanding mentoring, and exceptional scientific leadership. CS&E
September 2024
CSE DSI Director Vipin Kumar was the keynote speaker at the 3rd annual 2024 NSF HDR Ecosystem Conference (Harnessing the Data Revolution) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (September 9-12, 2024). Kumar’s talk, “Knowledge-Guided Machine Learning: A New Framework for Accelerating Scientific Discovery and Addressing Global Environmental Challenges” (video link), presented an overview of a new generation of machine learning algorithms, where scientific knowledge is deeply integrated in the design and training of machine learning models to accelerate scientific discovery. CSE DSI
March 2024
DSI affiliate Zhenong Jin and CSE DSI director Vipin Kumar are two of the coauthors of a new study from the University of Minnesota that suggests a machine learning model could help solve the tricky question of where planet-warming gases are escaping from soil. Both are part of the University's NSF-supported AI Institute, AI-LEAF. Star Tribune, Government Technology (gt). This work also received a brief mention in the Red River Farm Network, reaching an important ag audience.
February 21, 2024
CSE DSI affiliates Vipin Kumar and Zhenong Jin are part of team applying KGML to the development of a credible Measurement, Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MMRV) of agricultural emissions that can be used to incentivize the implementation of climate smart practices while boosting rural economies. CSE
January 2024
The U.S. National Science Foundation announced the inaugural Regional Innovation Engines awards, with a potential $1.6 billion investment nationally over the next decade. Great Lakes ReNEW, which is led by Chicago-based water innovation hub Current and includes teams of researchers from the University of Minnesota, will receive up to $160 million to develop and grow a water-focused innovation engine in the Great Lakes region. Great Lakes ReNEW is one of only ten teams nationwide to receive one of the first-ever Regional Innovation Engine awards. Several CSE DSI affiliates are part of the Minnesota research team including Tianhong Cui (Mechanical Engineering), Paige Novak (Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering), Vipin Kumar (Computer Science & Engineering, and Director of the CSE Data Science Initiative), and Jeff Strock (Soil, Water, and Climate and the Southwest Research and Outreach Center). Read more: CSE, NSF Announcement
Fall 2023
The paper "Near-term forecasts of stream temperature using deep learning and data assimilation in support of management decisions" published in the Journal of the American Water Resources Association in December 2022 was recently awarded the Ecological Society of America's Ecological Forecasting Outstanding Publication Award. Co-authors include several researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey in Pittsburgh and State College, PA, Madison, WI, and Davis, CA, as well as Prof. Vipin Kumar and his former student, Prof. Xiaowei Jia, at the University of Pittsburgh.
October 26, 2023
CSE DSI's director Vipin Kumar gave a keynote address entitled Role of Big Data and Machine Learning for Addressing Global Environmental Challenges at the Fall 2023 Symposium of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) in October 2023. The symposium was called Artificial Intelligence and Climate: The Role of AI in a Climate-Smart Sustainable Future. Over the two and a half days of the symposium the participants heard experts speak on state-of-the-art approaches to AI and climate science. Climate Change AI
Fall 2023
DSI associate director Shashi Shekhar is now director of UMN's new National AI Institute for Land, Economy, Agriculture & Forestry (AI-LEAF). DSI director Vipin Kumar is co-principal investigatorAccording to Kumar, "We have a long history that dates back to 1999 of building machine learning methodologies to discover new climate patterns, such as El Nino, and monitor changes to the environment, like deforestation, on a global scale." Soundbyte.
May 2023
Department of Computer Science & Engineering Professor Shashi Shekhar will direct a new National Artificial Intelligence Research Institute led by the University of Minnesota. Researchers at AI-LEAF (AI Institute for Land, Economy, Agriculture & Forestry) include Regents Professor Vipin Kumar and several other computer science faculty. They aim to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to create more climate-smart practices that will absorb and store carbon while simultaneously boosting the economy in the agriculture and forestry industries. UMN CS&E, UMN News, NSF Announcement
February 22, 2023
CSE DSI director Vipin Kumar is part of a $1.4 million University of Minnesota Medical School grant. The University of Minnesota Medical School has received a $1.4 million research grant for their work with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Among this team of researchers is Department of Computer Science & Engineering’s Vipin Kumar, whose work will help improve patient safety with machine learning. Kumar is also also director of the Data Science Initiative in the College of Science & Engineering. The team is introducing ENTRUST AI, “ENsuring the TRUSTworthiness of AI/ML Models to Optimize Continual Patient Safety.” UMN Medical School
November 30, 2022
CSE DSI Director Vipin Kumar gave a keynote address entitled Knowledge-Guided Machine Learning: A New Framework for Accelerating Scientific Discovery and Addressing Global Environmental Challenges at the ICDM conference in Orlando in November 2022. ICDM
August 3, 2022
Vipin Kumar is senior author on a paper highlighting the new dataset, called Reservoir and Lake Surface Area Timeseries (ReaLSAT) This first-of-its-kind global dataset of lakes and reservoirs shows how these waterbodies have changed over the last three decades or more. Kumar says, "This new dataset greatly improves the ability of scientists to understand the impact of changing climate and human actions on fresh water across the globe." NSF Stories. Read the paper.
May 9, 2022
A team of researchers led by the University of Minnesota has significantly improved the performance of numerical predictions for agricultural nitrous oxide emissions. Researchers developed a first-of-its-kind knowledge-guided machine learning model for agroecosystem called KGML-ag, inspired in part by pioneering research on knowledge-guided machine learning in environmental systems led by Vipin Kumar, a University of Minnesota Regents Professor in the Department of Computer Science.The first-of-its-kind knowledge-guided machine learning model is 1,000 times faster than current systems and could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. CSE. Read the paper.
May 3, 2022
A team of researchers led by the University of Minnesota and including Regents Professor Vipin Kumar has significantly improved the performance of numerical predictions for agricultural nitrous oxide emissions. IED
January 18, 2022
The University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering (CSE) launched the Data Science Initiative (DSI) to enhance the quality, impact, and visibility of data science research in the college and to foster collaborations across the University of Minnesota and with external partners. CSE Dean Mos Kaveh appointed Regents Professor Vipin Kumar as the inaugural director of the initiative. UMN CSE
October 14, 2021
The annual SC Test of Time Award (ToTA) goes to George Karypis and Vipin Kumar of the University of Minnesota for their paper “Multilevel Algorithms for Multi-Constraint Graph Partitioning”, published in the Proceedings of SC98. Inside HPC
September 10, 2021
University of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers including Regents Professor Vipin Kumar are part of a new $25 million climate modeling center funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) called the Learning the Earth with Artificial Intelligence and Physics (LEAP). UMN CSE
June 2021
New machine learning methods could improve environmental predictions. UMN research is featured. UMN Computer Science and Engineering (CS&E) Ph.D. alumnus Xiaowei Jia and CS&E professor Vipin Kumar are quoted. CS&E Ph.D. candidate Jared Willard is mentioned. June 22: Bioengineer.org; Burada Biliyorum; Cowboy.News; Dweb.News; EurekAlert!; Mirage News; News8Plus; Newswise; Phoenixbioinfosys; Science Codex; Scienmag; Simply Amazed; Super Computing Online; Tech Xplore; UMN Twin Cities News & Events; June 23: Alopan.in; Catholic Higher Education; Ethical Editor; ILDERIMI; Lenexweb; Livdose; ScienceDaily; World News Monitor; June 24: AI Summary; June 25: ACM TechNews; June 26: Technology.org
July 11, 2019
Featured on datanami.com: KDD 2019 to Rally Big Data Experts Around the Environment on Its First ‘Earth Day’
January 19, 2018
Vipin Kumar delivered the Inagural Headwaters Lecture at the Water Resources Assembly and Research Symposium
August 23, 2017
An article in Nature News cites research from the expeditions project on automatic discovery of teleconnections in climate, titled: How machine learning could help to improve climate forecasts.
June 16, 2017
Expedition research: The Promise of Big Data in Understanding Climate Change is featured in the latest volume of Healthy Generations, from the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health. The 74-page volume, Climate Change and Public Health, contains articles by national and local experts about the science of climate change, climate change preparedness, vulnerability to climate change, health effects, assessment, communication, and resilience.
April 8, 2017
Research from the expeditions project is the highlight in this article from Sierra Club: The "Big Science" Behind Climate Change.
November 13-18, 2016
Vipin Kumar was the 2016 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society Sidney Fernbach Award, which was presented at the SC16 Conference in Salt Lake City in November.
August 23, 2016
The National Science Foundation highlighted the accomplishments from the expedition project Understanding Climate Change: A Data Driven Approach in an article titled "Using data to better understand climate change".
August 14, 2016
Expeditions researchers Vipin Kumar (PI) and Shashi Shekhar (Co-I) were organizers for the Workshop on Data Science for Food, Energy and Water at KDD2016.
July 20, 2016
Expeditions researcher Vipin Kumar (PI) was a keynote speaker, presenting Big Data in Climate: Opportunities and Challenges for Machine Learning at the 39th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval in Pisa, Italy.
December 2015
Expeditions researchers Vipin Kumar (PI), Shashi Shekhar (Co-I), and James Faghmous (PhD) are guest editors for the Computing in Science and Engineering Special Issue, Computing in Climate, which focuses on data-driven research and climate.
October 29-November 1, 2015
Regent Professor Vipin Kumar was appointed as a conference Co-Chair for the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Big Data.
June 17, 2015
The University of Minnesota Board of Regents has named Expeditions PI and William Norris Professor, Vipin Kumar, a Regent Professor. The designation is the highest level of recognition given to faculty by the University. More details can be found here.
May 7, 2015
Expeditions PI and William Norris Professor, Vipin Kumar, was awarded the 2015 "Outstanding Faculty Award" from the Council of Graduate Students as well as the "Outstanding Mentor Award" from the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly. Prof. Kumar was the only faculty to win both of these university-wide awards given to faculty who show unmatched dedication to their students' professional and personal success.
June 30-July 2, 2015
The Fourth Annual Workshop on Understanding Climate Change from Data took place June 30th-July 2nd, at NCAR in Boulder, CO. The workshop featured several speakers, a panel comprised of leading experts in the field, and a poster session. Keynote speakers were NCAR director James Hurrell, National Medal of Science recpient Warren Washington, and NCAR Distinguished Acievement Award recipient Kevin Trenberth.
May 27, 2014
James Faghmous' thesis, "Climate change and variability: A spatio-temporal data mining perspective," won the 2014 University of Minnesota's Best Dissertation Award in Physical Sciences and Engineering. The thesis was further nominated for the Council of Graduate School's Outstanding Dissertation Award and the winner will be announced in December 2014.
December 2013
Muhammed Uluyol received an honorable mention for the Computing Research Association (CRA) Outstanding Undergraduate Awards. In 2013, Muhammed was an undergraduate research assistant in Expeditions PI Vipin Kumar's group working on novel data mining algorithms to monitor ocean phenomena. Despite being a first year student, Muhammed was a co-author in two top-tier computer science conferences: AAAI-13 and ICDM-13. Muhammed was mentored by Dr. James Faghmous, a CSE postdoctoral researcher on the Expeditions project. The CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Award program recognizes undergraduate students in North American colleges who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research.
August 15-16, 2013
The Third Annual Workshop on Understanding Climate Change from Data took place August 15th-16th, 2013, at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. The workshop featured several speakers, a panel comprised of leading experts in the field, and a poster session.
April 30, 2013
Graduate student Ph.D. James H. Faghmous successfully defended his doctoral thesis entitled "Climate change and variability: A spatio-temporal data mining approach". James' doctoral research focused on developing novel spatio-temporal data mining techniques to address the unique challenges associated with mining large climate datasets. In addition to the Expeditions in Computing grant, James' doctoral research was funded by an NIH-Neuro-Physical-Computational Graduate Fellowship, an NSF graduate research fellowship, an NSF Nordic Research Opportunity Fellowship, the Norwegian National Research Council, and a University of Minnesota Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.
November 8, 2012
James Faghmous, Varun Mithal and Luke Styles won the Best Student Paper Award at the 2012 IEEE Conference on Intelligent Data Understanding (CIDU 2012) for their paper "EddyScan: A Physically Consistent Global Ocean Eddy Monitoring Application". In their work, Faghmous and colleagues were able to track ocean eddies (the oceanic analog of hurricanes in the atmosphere) on a global scale much more efficiently and accurately than existing methods. Monitoring global ocean eddy activity is crucial to understanding how salt, heat and nutrients are transported across the ocean as well as future marine biodiversity. James, Varun and Luke are advised by Prof. Vipin Kumar and all work on an NSF Expeditions in Computing project on Understanding Climate Change.
October 6, 2012
Jaya Kawale won the Best Graduate Student Research Award in the ACM Student Research Competition (SRC) at the 2012 Grace Hopper Conference. The award carries a medal presented at the conference and a cash prize of $500. By winning the award, Jaya has also advanced to the Grand Finals of the 2013 ACM Student Research Competition. Jaya is advised by Prof. Vipin Kumar and works on an NSF Expeditions in Computing project on Understanding Climate Change.
August 6-7, 2012
The Second Annual Workshop on Understanding Climate Change from Data took place August 6th-7th, 2012, at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, MN. The workshop featured several speakers, a panel comprised of leading experts in the field, and a poster session.
August 12, 2012
Vipin Kumar received the 2012 ACM SIGKDD Innovation Award for technical excellenct and contributions that have had a lasting impact on the field of Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. The award was presented during the opening plenary session of the 2012 ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining in Beijing, China.
February 25, 2012
PhD student Jaya Kawale won the Best Graduate Student Poster Award at the Midwest Women in Computing Celebration for her work on "A Graph Based Approach to Find Teleconnections in Climate Data." As a winner of this regional prize, Jaya will receive funding to attend the national 2012 Grace Hopper Celebration.
December 18, 2011
A paper on precipitation extremes funded by the NSF Expeditions will appear in the February 2012 issue of Nature Climate Change. Read more about research by NSF Expeditions in Computing: Understanding Climate Change.
October 31, 2011
The Expeditions project was highlighted as having "huge potential" for influencing climate science methods by Reinhard Budich of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in a recent interview with HPCWire.
October 19, 2011
PhD student Jaya Kawale won the Best Student Paper award for her paper titled "Data Guided Discovery of Dynamic Climate Dipoles" at the NASA Conference on Intelligent Data Understanding (CIDU 2011). The paper was a joint work with authors from the University of Minnesota, North Carolina State University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The paper shows the utility of a graph-based approach to find teleconnections in climate data and uses the method as an alternate way for analyzing the performance of the various climate models used to study the global climate system.
September 27, 2011
The Expeditions project was highlighted in a guest posting, "Data Mining for Global Change: Furthering Science, Knowledge", by Karsten Steinhaeuser on The Computing Community Consortium Blog.
September 7, 2011
PhD student Jaya Kawale is featured in The Minnesota Daily.
August 18, 2011
PhD student Jaya Kawale won the 2011 Explorations in Science through Computation Student Award for her work on Discovering Teleconnections in Climate Data through Data Mining. The award will be presented at the 2011 Supercomputing Conference (SC11) awards ceremony.
August 15-16, 2011
The First Annual Workshop on Understanding Climate Change from Data took place August 15th-16th, 2011, at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, MN. The workshop featured several speakers, two panel discussions comprised of leading experts in the field, and a poster session.
November 29 - December 10, 2010
Vipin Kumar, Shyam Boriah, and a team of students attended the 16th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP16) in Cancun, Mexico. The team unveiled the beta version of its Tropical Forest ALERTS 1.0 platform on monitoring global land change that is being developed in collaboration with the Planetary Skin Institute and NASA.
September 3, 2010
Vipin Kumar was interviewed on the September 3, 2010 episode of Almanac on Twin Cities Public Television.