IRCAI & AWS COMPUTE FOR CLIMATE FELLOWSHIP

First-of-its-kind program funds proof of concepts for new ideas that leverage advanced cloud computing,
including generative AI and high performance computing, to solve some of the biggest challenges in the fight against climate change

The 2023 Fellows

The ocean is one of the world’s largest carbon sinks. Measuring sequestered ocean carbon can be the hardest and most expensive part of an ocean carbon project. Coastal Carbon is building AI models to solve that. The startup’s models can see underwater from satellites to track and measure underwater vegetation growth and how much carbon the vegetation captures. Their AWS-funded POC will use Amazon SageMaker and AWS HPC services to train satellite-agnostic foundation models of earth and sea that can identify and quantify ocean blue carbon. Their training corpus includes more than 50 years of geospatial data, which enables their AI models to generalize with greater accuracy. The Compute for Climate Fellowship POC will help Coastal Carbon increase transparency and trust in ocean carbon removal. They estimate that it will also facilitate up to a 1,000x increase in ocean monitoring and data collection capacity, which was previously done manually by divers and sensors. “We have accelerated our product development thanks to this program, which has allowed us to make even bigger plans for the scale of Coastal Carbon,” said Kelly Zheng, CEO of Coastal Carbon. “Remediating climate change is urgent. A faster POC means more tonnes of carbon removed that is measurable, scalable, and affordable, with the highest scientific rigor.”

Website: https://www.coastalcarbon.ai/

With drought, flooding, and extreme heat disrupting agriculture worldwide, the world needs crops that can withstand the impacts of climate change. That’s where Phytoform comes in. Phytoform is operating at the edge of biotechnology, AI, and agriculture, developing novel crop genetics to create more climate resilient plants. As a winner of the Compute for Climate Fellowship, Phytoform will use the program to enhance the accuracy of CRE.AI.TIVE, their unique AI-powered pipeline that can draw novel insights from plant genomics, evolve new crop characteristics, and make plants more resilient. The POC will help Phytoform find new research and development (R&D) solutions for more climate resilient seeds at scale.

“The Compute for Climate Fellowship is absolutely crucial for Phytoform’s mission of improving sustainability in agriculture,” said Nicolas Kral, CTO of Phytoform. “With the help from AWS and IRCAI we were able to really accelerate our solution to deploy a unique approach to enhance R&D and secure the food of tomorrow.”

Website: https://www.phytoformlabs.com/

Realta Fusion is developing compact magnetic mirror fusion energy systems to decarbonize industrial process heat and power. Their aim is to create the fastest path to commercial deployment of fusion energy. Through the Compute for Climate Fellowship, Realta Fusion is developing the first-of-a-kind plasma stability simulation in the cloud by leveraging Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) HPC instances and Elastic Fabric Adapter. Plasma stability is a principal design requirement for fusion power plants. This is groundbreaking. Prior to this POC, there were only two super computers in the United States that could handle these simulations, and they are at National Labs with a year-long waitlist. With this POC, Realta Fusion will demonstrate that the plasma stability simulations can be run in the cloud, which will help democratize access for the whole fusion industry.

“Advances in AWS cloud computing have paved a new pathway for Realta Fusion to expedite research in magnetic confinement fusion energy systems.” said Cary Forest, PhD, co-founder and chief scientific officer at Realta Fusion. “Such intensive plasma physics simulations have never been done in the cloud before. The Realta Fusion team is grateful for this fellowship award and excited to use the power of cloud computing to advance fusion energy research.”

Website: https://realtafusion.com/

Xatoms is a water treatment startup using AI and quantum computing to discover molecules of substances that can purify polluted water. Their Compute for Climate Fellowship POC is focused on creating a water purification technology that is both effective and affordable, aimed at assisting those who currently lack access to safe drinking water. Xatoms’s proposed POC will target end users in developing countries, particularly underserved communities lacking clean water access, aiming to reduce mortality rates and redirecting time spent fetching water towards education and entrepreneurship. Their POC will develop a new AI/ML algorithm capable of analyzing a large amount of chemical data, followed by simulations of novel molecules that can purify water. They will use AWS services like Amazon Braket for storage and quantum simulation software and Tangelo to accelerate the discovery process.

“The Compute for Climate Fellowship will significantly boost our material discovery efforts, thanks to the resources and mentorship provided,” said Diana Virgovicova, CEO of Xatoms. “We are proud to be backed by some of the biggest names in the industry, highlighting the urgency of addressing global water challenges affecting more than two billion people worldwide.”

Website: https://www.xatoms.com/

Applications for 2024 Compute for Climate Fellowship are now open!

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