Pedram Hassanzadeh Profile

Pedram Hassanzadeh is an associate professor of geophysical sciences, computational and applied mathematics, and data science at the University of Chicago. He is also faculty director of UChicago’s AI for Climate Initiative and codirector of the Human-Centered Weather Forecasts Initiative, which in 2025 helped deliver AI-based monsoon forecasts to 38 million farmers in India. His research brings together artificial intelligence, physics, and mathematics to understand and predict weather and climate, with a focus on extreme events such as heat waves and hurricanes. Hassanzadeh codeveloped NVIDIA’s FourCastNet—a pioneering AI weather model—and his research group develops AI models and studies their inner workings and limitations, for example, in forecasting rare, unprecedented extremes known as gray swans. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley; was a Ziff Environmental Fellow at Harvard University; and was previously on the faculty of Rice University. His honors include the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award.