E3SM Celebrates Outstanding Achievement and AI Innovation at June 2026 All-Hands Meeting

At the E3SM All-Hands meeting in Washington, DC in June 2026, the project proudly recognized both the steady, high-impact contributions that strengthen E3SM every day and the creative AI-enabled work that is opening new paths for science and engineering.

Figure 1. From left to right: Renata McCoy, Ruby Leung, Peter Caldwell, Hyun Kang (awardee), Mark Taylor, Sally McFarlane.

Hyun Kang (Fig. 1) received an Outstanding Contributions award for his exceptional work on Omega Version 0 and Version 1 development and delivery. Hyun rapidly mastered C++ and Kokkos, strengthened the Polaris testing infrastructure, and played a vital role in testing, debugging, and resolving critical issues across the project. His technical excellence, high standards, and team-first spirit have made him an indispensable contributor to Omega and MPAS-Ocean.

Xiaoliang Song was honored for his exceptional contributions to advancing deep convection representation in the Atmosphere model. Xiaoliang has enhanced the deep convection scheme in EAMv3, built a specialized 13-km testbed, and supported testing and evaluation in EAMxx. His work has deepened understanding of convection impacts on humidity, precipitation, tropical variability, and aerosols, and his publications have helped shape the future development of EAM.

Figure 2. From left to right: Renata McCoy, Ruby Leung, Peter Caldwell, Shixuan Zhang (awardee), Mark Taylor, Sally McFarlane.

Shixuan Zhang (Fig. 2) received recognition for outstanding contributions across the Coupled, S2D, and Infrastructure groups. Shixuan has advanced E3SM v3 and v4 coupled system evaluation, streamlined workflows for large simulations, supported key analysis and hindcast studies, and strengthened diagnostic capabilities for E3SM, including critical EAMxx support. His leadership, versatility, and dedication have made a lasting impact across multiple parts of the project.

AI-in-Action Awards

The project introduced the AI-in-Action Award earlier this year. The first 3 winners of this award are listed below.

Figure 3. From left to right: Renata McCoy, Ruby Leung, Sally McFarlane, Tian Zhou (awardee), Mark Taylor, Peter Caldwell.

Tian Zhou (Fig. 3) received an AI-in-Action award for “ESFlow: Safer AI-Assisted E3SM Analysis Through Validated Workflow Composition.” Tian developed a validated AI-driven analysis framework that turns natural-language requests into reproducible E3SM workflows, bringing together flexibility, scientific rigor, and safer use of AI in analysis.

Tom Vo was honored for “AI-Embedded Engineering: Accelerating SimBoard Development.” Tom used AI across design, implementation, testing, documentation, and deployment to rapidly build SimBoard, demonstrating how AI can support end-to-end engineering productivity and produce reusable tools for the E3SM community.

Figure 4. From left to right: Renata McCoy, Ruby Leung, Sally McFarlane, Jim Foucar (awardee), Mark Taylor, Peter Caldwell.

Jim Foucar (Fig. 4) was recognized for “Using Copilot to Translate Fortran to C++/Kokkos.” His work showed how AI can dramatically accelerate large-scale model porting, reducing tedious translation work and helping move E3SM code more quickly into modern C++/Kokkos workflows.

The three AI-in-Action winners are presenting their projects and demos as part of a series of E3SM Thursday All-Hands sessions taking place this summer. Check the latest schedule for presentation dates.

Both the Outstanding Achievement Awards and the AI-in-Action Awards reflect the very best of E3SM, scientific excellence, technical leadership, and a willingness to adopt new tools in service of the mission. Congratulations to all of the honorees for their remarkable contributions.

Contact

• Renata McCoy, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory