GEOG Seminar: "NASA Data Science Group and Foundation Models for Science"

Join us at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 19 in River Road 325 or via Zoom for this seminar with Mark Caroll, research scientist and Data Science Group lead at NASA GSFC.

Abstract

The Data Science Group at NASA Goddard is led by Department of Geographical Sciences alum Dr. Mark Carroll.  During this seminar I will talk about a number of different projects that are ongoing across NASA Goddard with a focus on Deep Learning and Foundation Model projects.  We’ve done a lot of work evaluating open source Foundation Models for land surface (for example Dino and SAM from Meta, Prithvi-EO from NASA, and TerraMind) also for atmosphere (GenCast/GraphCast from Google, Aurora from Microsoft, Prithvi-WxC from NASA).  I will show some of our evaluation results and a couple examples of what we have done with fine tuning.  Particular emphasis will be placed on showing what these types of models are capable of and where are some of their limitations.

Bio 

Dr. Mark Carroll is a graduate of the University of Maryland: Bachelor of Science in Natural Resources Management, Master’s in MPSGIS program and PhD in Department of Geographical Sciences.  My research interests include land cover dynamics particularly surface water dynamics in the Arctic.  I spent four years doing field work and bench chemistry for water quality in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, spent eleven years as a faculty research assistant at UMD Department of Geography and spent the past 15 years at NASA Goddard first as a contractor in the Biospheric sciences division and the last seven as the lead for the Data Science Group. 

For the Zoom link, please visit the GEOG Department Calendar.