Faculty members win Bezos grants to fight climate change with AI

Cornell has won three of 15 major grants awarded to leverage artificial intelligence in the fight against climate change and environmental challenges.

Eilyan Bitar, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in Cornell Engineering; the Cornell Lab of Ornithology; and Ayshwarya Subramanian, assistant professor of molecular biology and genetics in the College of Arts and Sciences, are recipients of funding from Phase II of the Bezos Earth Fund's AI for Climate and Nature Grand Challenge. The funding will advance the researchers' ongoing efforts to scale AI solutions that address the world's most pressing environmental challenges - from biodiversity loss and food insecurity to climate change. Launched in 2024, the challenge supports early-stage concepts demonstrating the potential for AI to accelerate environmental progress.

Bitar is leading a research project exploring how electric vehicles (EVs) can serve as a flexible, dispatchable network of mobile energy storage to strengthen and decarbonize the power grid, with a $1.8 million grant.

By turning EVs into flexible grid assets, Bitar's project will accelerate the decarbonization of both the power grid and transportation sectors by developing AI-powered forecasting, aggregation and decision-making tools to coordinate the real-time charging and discharging of millions of spatially distributed EVs - replacing expensive stationary batteries with a nimble, decentralized network of batteries on wheels.

"Most EVs are parked more than 95% of the time," said Bitar, who is also a faculty fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. "But that idle time is an opportunity in disguise. Together, those parked EVs make up a vast and underutilized reservoir of energy storage."

A $1.8 million grantwill help the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics develop acoustic sensors and AI analytics to identify real-time threats to forests from illegal activities and provide insights into ecosystem health.

The Cornell Lab, in collaboration with collaborating institutions, will develop cutting-edge bioacoustic technology to advance conservation monitoring in the Global South, a missing link in today's biodiversity crisis.

"We are facing the biggest environmental challenge because of the scale of the changes and the speed at which they're happening. It's effectively a mass extinction that's happening within decades rather than millennia," said Ian Owens, director of the Cornell Lab.

Currently researchers don't know how wildlife populations are doing, particularly in some of the most biodiverse areas such as in South America, Southeast Asia and Africa, Owens said.

"Satellite images help us monitor habitat change, but that's not enough to uncover what's happening across all species and research indicates that drastic declines are underway," Owens said. "We need to figure out what's causing the declines and how we can reverse them. We can't do that using traditional methods, and support from the Bezos Earth Fund will help us unlock exactly the kind of efficient, scalable approach we need."

With a $2 million award, Subramanian will co-lead a project to develop two breakthrough AI tools that democratize advanced genomics for wildlife conservation. She'll work in partnership with colleagues at Revive & Restore, a wildlife conservation organization, and colleagues at The Rockefeller University's Vertebrate Genome Lab. Revive & Restorepromotes the incorporation of biotechnologies into standard conservation practice and is the lead grantee institution in this award.

The team's first tool will automate the time-intensive final steps of assembling complete genome sequences for endangered species, dramatically accelerating the pace at which scientists can decode an animal's full genetic blueprint.

Their second tool will function as an AI-powered conservation advisor, analyzing genetic data to provide actionable recommendations for genetic rescue - and identifying which populations need genetic intervention and how to implement it effectively. Together, these tools will enable any conservationist, regardless of genomic expertise, to make science-backed decisions that protect species for generations to come.

Subramanian will play a key role in the project, building on her work using machine learning to predict extinction risk from mammalian genomes.

"Our early models show that genomic features can be promising predictors of extinction risk," she said. "With support from the Bezos Earth Fund, we're now taking this a step further. By applying generative and interpretable AI to a broader and more diverse set of genomes, we hope to prototype a next-generation tool for conservation management."