At Boston University, research is the driving force behind innovation that spans industries and shapes the future. BU empowers faculty and students to tackle complex global challenges, producing thousands of publications each year and fueling breakthroughs that extend far beyond campus. Learn more about the innovators whose work powers discoveries on and off campus.
Boston University’s Research Programs
As a Tier 1 research institution, BU leads student and faculty research across disciplines. In 2024 alone, BU researchers authored 7,609 publications, with over 200 companies developing and selling products based on BU discoveries. One of BU’s leading researchers is Elizabeth A. Barnes, a Computing and Data Science professor and Dalton Family Chair in Environmental Data Science & Sustainability.
Integrating AI and Earth Science
Barnes’s research combines AI and Earth science. Along with her research group, she uses AI to analyze massive amounts of data from Earth’s interconnected systems.
“As I tell my students, if you’re trained as an Earth scientist, you’re already trained to think about big data—to think about finding relationships, to understand that correlation is not causation. So, when you learn how to use AI tools, you immediately start to see the connections to your own work, because that’s what we do every day,” says Barnes.
From their research, Barnes’s team found that large-scale data models can be used to predict hurricanes across years and seasons. They also developed a method that combines machine learning and analog forecasting to improve multiyear climate predictions. The team collaborated with other researchers to bring together climate model simulations and exchange data to analyze how extreme weather in one country could spread and affect others.
Learning and Building Across Disciplines
Barnes’s work demonstrates how an evolving understanding of AI can help predict climate changes and catastrophes.
“In her work, Libby doesn’t see separate disciplines; she sees these all as tools for solving broad, complex problems. That’s the definition of convergent research,” said Azer Bestavros, Associate Provost for Computing and Data Sciences.
She uses these tools to look years into the future.
“Uncertainty quantification is huge in [the Earth sciences], because we do a lot of prediction. You can think of it as weather forecasting, but we go out years to decades into the future,” Barnes said.
Her work continues as both AI and Earth science evolve.
“I’m in this field because I think it matters, and at this point, AI and Earth science don’t feel like two fields to me,” she said. “It feels like I’m working in one field asking, ‘What’s next?’ And for me, what’s next is using these tools to do something hard, something that maybe we didn’t know how to do before, or didn’t even know to ask.”
Explore BU’s AI Degree Cluster
Boston University’s AI Cluster includes multiple online master’s programs developed across BU schools. Each serves a distinct pathway:
Online MS in AI in Business: AI strategy, decision-making, and responsible adoption for business leaders
Online MS in Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence: Computer science foundations with applied AI depth for builders
Online MS in Enterprise AI: Enterprise-scale AI implementation, including LLM applications, MLOps, governance, and enterprise transformation
Online MS in Software Engineering for Artificial Intelligence: Engineering practices for building and deploying reliable AI-enabled software
Online MS in AI and Education: Understanding AI as an epistemic infrastructure, developing professional judgment to evaluate technical claims, and designing learning environments that protect student and teacher agency
Learn more about BU’s online MS AI cluster at Boston University.