Sudhanshu Kumar, a Ph.D. student in the Hydroclimate Research Group within the Department of Crop, Soil & Environmental Sciences, has been selected for the 2025 LEAP Summer Momentum Fellowship — a prestigious and highly competitive opportunity for doctoral students in climate data science and related fields. The fellowship is offered by Columbia University’s Learning the Earth with Artificial Intelligence and Physics (LEAP) center, an NSF-funded Science and Technology Center.
The fellowship is awarded to a select group of doctoral students across the nation who have demonstrated exceptional promise in climate data science. Kumar will spend the summer working at Columbia University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, where he will work with leading researchers and engage in cutting-edge projects at the intersection of artificial intelligence and climate science.
“We’re incredibly proud to see Sudhanshu Kumar selected for this prestigious, nationally competitive fellowship,” said Di Tian, associate professor in the Department of Crop, Soil & Environmental Sciences and principal investigator of the Hydroclimate Research Group. “This opportunity highlights his deep commitment to advancing climate data science and will help broaden his vision, establish new collaborations, and further inspire him to build a successful career in the future.”
Kumar is pursuing his doctorate in earth system science, an interdisciplinary program that brings together the Colleges of Agriculture, Sciences and Mathematics, Engineering, Liberal Arts, and Forestry, Wildlife, and Environment. His doctoral research focuses on the intersection of extreme hydroclimate events and machine learning, including the development of deep learning models for soil moisture and flash drought monitoring and prediction. This work has significant implications for advancing drought early warning and mitigation. His recent research on “Causal Discovery Analysis Reveals Global Sources of Predictability for Regional Flash Droughts” has been published in Water Resources Research.
Selection for the LEAP Summer Momentum Fellowship represents a significant milestone in Kumar’s academic journey. The experience will broaden his research, foster new collaborations, and further inspire him to drive innovation and impact in the field of climate data science.
“I am honored to be selected for this fellowship,” Kumar said. “It is a unique opportunity to apply my background in machine learning to climate science and to contribute to global efforts in understanding and mitigating climate change. I am thankful to Auburn University for inculcating skills that helped me get selected for this fellowship and will be very helpful for this next project.”
