Xi Xiao, a computer science doctoral student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham College of Arts and Sciences, developed a next-generation artificial intelligence model for climate science. The research paper, on which he is the only student author, won the Best Paper Award, the highest honor given at the world’s top-tier conference for high-performance computing, networking, storage and data analysis — 2025 Supercomputing Conference.
The award recognizes research that stands out for originality, innovation, impact and technical quality. Acceptance to the conference is highly competitive, with submissions from top national laboratories, major research institutions and computing teams from around the world.