Climate Change AI - CCAI is now scaling its impact thanks to support from the Jacobs Institute through the Public Interest Technology (PiTech) Initiative and the Runway Startup Postdoc at Cornell Tech, a PIT-UN study case.

Maria João Sousa, joins Cornell Tech’s Public Interest Technology Initiative (PiTech) as PiTech Startup Postdoc in the Runway Program. In this new role, Maria will work as Incoming Executive Director at Climate Change AI (CCAI), a global non-profit that catalyzes impactful work at the intersection of climate change and machine learning. Before joining the PiTech Initiative, Maria pursued her PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, in Lisbon (Portugal), which she is set to defend in 2023. Her doctoral thesis focused on cooperative aerial robotics and artificial intelligence for wildfire detection and monitoring systems and was developed as a research fellow at both IDMEC in the Center of Intelligent Systems and at ADAI in the Forest Fire Research Center.

The Public Interest Technology (PiTech) Initiative at Cornell Tech is thrilled to welcome its inaugural PiTech Runway Startup Postdoc, Priya Donti, to the Runway Startup cohort this fall. Priya will work on scaling her nonprofit Climate Change AI, which aims to catalyze impactful work at the intersection of climate change and machine learning. “Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, requiring the mobilization of many different tools and approaches from across society,” says Priya. “Through our work at Climate Change AI, we aim to foster the use of machine learning in ways that support and strengthen climate change efforts.”